Unity Tutorial 09

 

This week’s tutorials were a continuation of last week's sphere sumo battle game. This week's tutorial focused on spawning more waves of enemies - where when a player manages to knock out the enemy sphere from the island, an extra enemy player would spawn on the next wave. This would work the same for the power ups. By adding this functionality it will increase the difficulty of the game and keep the player engaged.

 In order to do this, we were introduced to the for-loop method. The main idea behind the for-loop method is that rather than rewriting the same instantiate code to spawn multiple enemies, adding the  for-loop to the instantiate will loop it a number amount of times depending how many enemies you want to spawn for each round.

Unfortunately, this was difficult to understand as I was not able to test out the code for myself.  My Unity kept freezing every time I pressed the play mode. Funny enough, it only happened when I added the for-loop method in my IDE (shown in green).

Screenshot of code in my IDE

If I removed this line of code by turning it into a comment, the game would not freeze when I click on Unity’s play mode. I’m not sure why this is the case but I wasn’t really able to properly follow along and see if the code I put in the script actually works.

Here’s a screenshot of my frozen Unity. No pretty cloud particles in the background and no enemies spawning. 

For Challenge 4, I made a separate project as I was worried that it would freeze too and I  didn’t want to take any chances. I found this challenge the most difficult; not only because it was challenge 4 but I couldn’t look back at the code on  the Sumo battle project so I had to review it from the tutorial page.

Again, my biggest problem for this challenge was not being able to spawn extra enemies in every wave. I fiddled with the code here and there but couldn’t work out what I was missing. The thing I learned from programming a game is that you need a lot of patience and accept that sometimes it will be more mistakes than progress. I will try again with a clear mind and hope for the best.

Review Week Comments and Feedback

 

Overall, the comments I have received so far by other students are pretty good. I can understand, in certain instances when it comes to giving feedback it can be a bit of a difficult situation as you may not have too much feedback to give or you may not want to seem rude when giving constructive feedback. So, sometimes it can be easier to say nicer things. And I guess that’s okay. Everyone does it. Even I do it sometimes.

 Comments and feedback can be tricky because in some ways it’s different in writing than it is verbally. Sometimes it’s harder to articulate certain things in writing than it is in person because they may not sound the same or the way you intended it. It can be a tricky process.

Having looked back at some of the feedback from my project posts, there were some good comments that were thought provoking and got me thinking about my game and its possibilities. (I kinda wish I had the guts to look at those sooner!) Feedback on the project are very useful especially when it comes to understanding the viewpoints of everyone reading about your game and seeing if they way you explained your game is in a way the easy for others to understand the gist behind it. If you look at it that way, you could treat your classmates as your target audience as they are nearly the only people who will read about the game. So, really any feedback is pretty golden and helped me with changing certain aspects like the scenery or considering game setting.

 

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As I have previously mentioned, when it came to giving feedback to others I did initially focus more on the ‘Wow’ factor in their project feedback. However, after being introduced to the ’ wow, wonder, what if’ and ‘tell’, ‘ask’ and ‘give’ strategies it has helped me structure my feedback  accordingly and be able to provide constructive feedback while being considerate of others. The sample questions that came along with the strategies also provided some perspective of what to look for in someone’s post and notice if something was amiss. This in turn made it that bit easier to write feedback. So I’m glad I was introduced to the strategies.

I also found some useful tips here and there when it came to looking at how other wrote their blog. For instance, I didn’t really use too much of bullet points when it came to working on the reading tasks. However there were cases where they seemed more appropriate to convey ideas in a straightforward and linear fashion which made things easier to understand.

There is sense of getting to know other people when writing blog comments. In some ways you still get to learn about a person by the way they write and introduce themselves. Although, there may not necessarily be conversation taking place as that would depend if the author wants to or has time to go through the comments or not. However, given the situation of remote learning, it is a good way to interact with others.

Personally, I’m not one for introductions. Especially when it comes to publishing a post about myself. So after publishing it, I made a mental note to try and forget about it until I couldn’t  XD. But as I mentioned before with the whole situation, it is important to put yourself out there a bit and give others an opportunity to get to know you in some way.

Looking forward, I want to be able to read the comments more regularly than I have done so far. Spending one evening each week to look through them and maybe post a few replies would be beneficial especially in relation to project feedback.

 

Week 9 Reading and Writing

 

Overall, I think the reading assignments have helped me in getting accustomed to digesting various levels of information from more informal videos and articles to academic level papers. I would not say I am a hundred percent comfortable reading the academic papers. However, compared to when I first started out, I feel like I can work my way through it better.

Initially, it would take me a long time just to read through the first reading. By the time I reached half of the second reading, the 45 minutes were up. Then, when it came to writing the blog post, I found myself going back to the readings as I found that I could not remember enough to articulate what I had understood from those readings. It was a slow and tedious process.

Once we started working on assignments as class, it was a game changer c; I think I am very detail-oriented and this can cause me to lose sight of the objective. So when we were taught some strategies on how to approach the reading and writing, it helped me to focus on the bigger picture for completing the writing assignment on that particular topic.

What I learned from working on the tasks together was that order doesn’t matter. What I mean by this is that although the video was last on the list after the readings, it would be of benefit to watch it first as a general overview of the topic. Then you can move onto the article and the academic paper.

Secondly, it’s important to have a word document open and ready to go. The idea with the papers is that you scan through them. Any bit of information that seems relevant to the topic can be put in the document. This works the same for the video. Pause it and add a few bits of notes. Some of this will be copy and paste but that’s ok as it is only there for reference so you don’t need to go back to the papers or video as you have everything you need in the one document.

Then, when looking at the notes and information that was collected it you collate that information and try to find common ‘themes’ in the readings. An example of this would be last week’s assignment (week 8).  The topic was the theory of ‘Game Fun’. The keywords or themes that were common in all the readings and video were:  games – MDA , Types of fun, Flow theory and Learning (is part of the theory of fun in games).

Finally, it comes to actually writing the blog post in your own words underneath the keywords that serve as sub-headings.

What I need to improve on for future readings is too be consistent and implement this strategy on my own. Most importantly, I need to manage my time and not spend too long getting bogged down about a particular paragraph in the text that looks like cipher.

I’d say it wouldn’t be much of a surprise that I found the reading task on ‘Game Fun’ the most enjoyable. Leaving aside the fact that it was a group effort for the actual task and focusing more on why I enjoyed this particular reading.

(source) I chose this image because I feel like the quote accurately represents the pleasure found in games.

Well, as I may I have mentioned before I do play games when I have the time, and due to the current situation with lockdown it’s one of the main ways I get ‘hang out’ with friends. As a gamer I do find it interesting to learn about theory behind the experience of ‘fun’ in games. So it was a bit of an eye-opener to read about fun being categorized such as the ‘eight kinds of fun’ which ties into the MDA or the 4 key’s of fun by Nicole. It allowed me to think about and identify what gets the player hooked in a game in the first place. It also made me reflect on myself as a player and see where I fit in the ‘fun’ chart. Due to this particular topic being open and relevant to many people, not necessarily just game designers but also a player is why I found it a ‘fun’ and interesting read.

Now, the big question. Have I put theory to practice? Did the notes help me in creating my game? In a way, yes they have. By understanding some of theory during the reading tasks it helped me when making decisions for my game. This was the case for the GDD in particular as not only we had to do a reading task for it but also make our very own as part of the game design process. Having a reading that is directly linked with the project task was helpful in understanding what you had to when it came than to making your own.

In terms of accomplishments, I don’t know if I have any. I know I learned a lot about game design and myself through the way I work around my tasks. I’m still working through building my game in unity which is messy process. Overall, I wouldn’t say there is an outstanding accomplishment from my end. However, I do hope that I am prepared for whatever is coming next semester.