In this week's reading task, I was amazed and shocked because I had no clue and would never thought about that the choices we had to make in a game won't affect the plot and that whatever we choose will end in the same way. Telling memorable stories and plots in a game is very important and that it is better to have your own narrative to the game and you make the choices and by these choices, the plot of the game should change but having a fixed plot no matter what isn't a memorable experience.
In this week's project task I worked some more on my prototype. I changed a lot since my game was similar to the first tutorial; however, the road is zigzag so I had to start all over again so I can work on the zigzag road and not the straight one that was included in the assets of unit 1. I got assets from the assets store to make a zigzag road and I added it to my prototype scene as long with the assets from unit 1 that I used for the car and the roadblocks. I now have everything ready but what I need to add the "game over" script which I am trying to figure out and to add the time that the car has to finish the race in. This is what I have so far, the truck is moving but when you play you have to slow down when taking turns because the car will flip and you will lose.
In this week's unity tutorial, it was the last lesson in unit 4, which is lesson 4.4 and unit 4 challenge. In the last lesson, I followed the tutorials and then suddenly while I was in the third video, an error occurred in my script. At first, I did not know what was happening but then I returned to the part where my game was not playing and then I figured out the problem was that I missed a letter in my script. I forgot the "s" in a word and that caused an error in the game that is why it wouldn't go to the play mode but then after doing that everything worked fine and the game was playing. For the challenge, I honestly struggled doing it and getting it to play. I followed a tutorial to help me, did everything but it kept doing the error thing in unity and I couldn't get it to play even after reading the script and did everything to see what was the issue but couldn't find anything. I don't like challenges that has a lot of coding because it is hard to read with a lot of coding in a script that's why in the challenges I follow a tutorial while doing them because it is hard to figure out the code by myself.
The feedbacks and comments I receive on my blog posts every week are very beneficial, especially the ones related to the project or unity because I get to know if my project is good enough and what I need to add or change to make it better. I honestly like this kind of task because how will I know if my game is good enough if I don’t receive feedback from others. It is also very important to see what others think and what they suggest about the project and things we do for inspirations and help in improving them. The strategies that were included in the feedback tasks the last couple of weeks were useful and helped in giving feedbacks to others on their posts and project, such as the WWW strategy, which is wow, wonder, and what if. This is basically telling people that what they did is good but also providing suggestions that will help them in improving what they did and asking them things that you could be curious to know about or if this thing is not clear enough. I used this strategy and other strategies for giving feedbacks to others on their game and project blog posts. I enjoyed reading them and giving them feedbacks that I hope were useful for them in their project and other blog posts. With these blog comments and feedback tasks, I started to know a lot about others in my class, which is nice because it is important to know about people and make friends and connections with them. I am very happy with how my blog posts are, especially the introduction post because I feel from the comments on it people know about me a lot of stuff. I always get excited when people comment on my introduction post. This blog post was important for our blogs to create a space for others to know about us more and create connections that will make others interested to know about others by making friends. This is a good way to know people and see what things are common between each other and know about each other’s cultures. I would like to know more strategies in how to give feedback to others because I think it is good and important thing in life to know how to provide feedback for others in a polite and professional way that will help them and give them suggestions to improve what they did. I enjoy this task, especially when others provide feedback on my project because this is very helpful and useful to me when designing my project so as I know what to add, include, and alter. I am happy with how my blog is so far. I don’ want to change anything but maybe add things that are interesting and entertaining to make it appealing to others and not boring while reading and going through the blog posts. It is really important to make your blog appealing and fun to go through.
So far, the reading and writing assignments are working perfect for me since the reading tasks we do are instead of the lecture; therefore, they are beneficial and useful for us and for designing the game because without them, we would be lost and have no idea what to do for the game when designing and creating it in unity. They are also helpful because they mention the mechanics and everything that we need to consider when designing the game. All the week’s readings were quite beneficial as I mentioned before; however, my favorite one so far is the “games Fun” Reading. I enjoyed reading it because I didn’t know how important to include fun in the game to make the player engaged and involved in the game rather than being boring and not challenging. The notes I take each week for the reading tasks are helping me through my journey of designing the game because without these notes and the blog posts I would forget what is important and what needs to be included when designing the game. I discovered various research methods from these tasks because after each reading blog post we must include three resource links that are helpful and include the same topic that was mentioned in the reading articles we read. My game project so far is going great; however, I struggled a little bit at first when trying to figure out the game I want to design and when designing the game in unity. Unity is complicated and hard to understand but with the tutorials we have been doing each week, they made it easier to understand unity and know how it works. I added the essential objects and assets I need for starting my game in unity and also added the scripts I need to make it work as I need it to be however, I still have things that I need to alter and include in the script as well as the layout of the game. My game works as I want it to work except that the obstacles I included aren’t working as I need them to be, and I am trying to figure out the issue but couldn’t find it till now but hopefully I will be able to in the next few weeks before finishing the game. I used the help of the first unity tutorial since my game is like unit 1, which is a truck moving in a street carrying boxes, trying to avoid roadblocks, and trying to reach the finish line in 60 seconds. The only difference is that the street is zigzag and not straight. This class has been so fun, and I really enjoyed it in learning all these things about designing a game and becoming a game designer. The tasks I enjoyed the most are the extra credit tasks because I think it is really entertaining and important to learn a lot of other things next to our course. I am happy with what I accomplished so far in this course especially my game idea and that I am excited to see how will it turn out to be.
This is my favorite image from week 4 reading task that was talking about the game elements and how it is important when designing the game to draw or design it using paper and start to test it in real life because this is how the designer will know if it's going to be a good game that is fun and challenging to the players. It is an essential step when designing the game that helps with developing the idea.
I think that what we are doing is enough for the reading tasks but if there is something that would make the reading tasks a lot more useful is by adding short videos instead of just one and just one reading article that is easy to read.
In this week's prototype, I focused more on the scripts and making the Truck move instead of just trying to add good visuals and colors. I followed unit 1 in the unity tutorials we did in the first couple of weeks since unit one is pretty much similar to my game. I added the scripts, which are the Follow Player and the Player Controller. The Truck moves forward with the "W" key and left and right using the arrow keys. I added also the roadblocks; however, I am having difficulties in getting them to work as I want because I want them to block the car by staying in their place but when I start the game they just disappear. This is how my game looks so far nothing was changed from last week except I just added these rocks.
This week's unity tutorials were interesting. I have started understanding how to add scripts to the players, how to make the objects like the sphere move; however, I am still confused in the coding and what exactly should I write because it is hard to figure out the code my myself without any help. These tutorials can help me in my prototype when I start adding objects like roadblocks to the road as obstacles to the game that the truck or the player has to avoid so as to not lose the game. The coding needs a little bit of practice since as I mentioned that I can't figure out the script without help because it is complicated. This unit is not as hard as the others since it is focused on the script and what could be written for the movements of the spheres or the objects added. I had difficulty while adding the code because whenever I write something wrong I start reading the script from the beginning and comparing it to the tutorial until I find the problem or the issue and sometimes even I spend thirty minutes to find the problem because it is really confusing. That is the worst thing because if you wrote something wrong, the game will not play.
In this week's reading task, I have learnt about the fun part in a game. There are different types of fun that make the game enjoyable and creates an engagement with the people playing it. Making the game challenging add fun to the game. For example, as the video I watched mentioned that Tic Tac Toe is not a fun game because there aren't challenges or things to predict; however, games that involves shooting makes it fun since the player can start engaging with it and think about the next move before shooting.
I have started with my prototype and game design in unity so far everything is fine but I have things I don't know how to apply it. I used the assets in the first unity game since it includes objects and the truck that are similar to my game. I had problem with the street because I do not know how to change it as my game is supposed to be the truck moving in a curved street not straight but I think I will figure this out after watching some tutorials that might help with my game.
In this week's unity tutorials, I had difficulties in trying to clone the wood that the player jump over to avoid it. I kept trying to figure out the problem and kept looking at the scripts to see if I wrote something wrong but couldn't figure it out. Everything worked well and there wasn't a n error but it just didn't keep cloning while playing the game. Another problem was trying to put the sound effects on the game. Unity is honestly hard and somehow complicated because of the coding included is confusing; however, following the tutorials made it a little bit easier. I am still figuring out how I am going to start my game by searching for tutorials on YouTube that are similar to my game to help me with my game idea.
I followed a tutorial while doing the tutorials because as I mentioned that it is hard to do it alone with all the coding included in it. I am honestly excited to see how my game will turn out but I know that it will be a hard process while creating and designing it. I hope that I figure out how I will do it and it turns out as I wanted and designed it.
In this Reading task, it was mentioned that keeping the flow for the character when playing the game is essential because of several factors, including addiction to games that may cause in some cases death or being bored to the extent that the player will not play the game at all. Flow is about keeping the players involved in challenges that are above their skills to make it entertaining; however, making the game challenges predictable can cause less involvement in the game. Flow has its advantages and disadvantages but being aware of the player's engagement with the challenges and balancing them with the player's skills is important to keep the flow.
https://thinkgamedesign.com/flow-theory-game-design/
In this week's Unity tutorial, we had to complete lesson 3.2. In this lesson, I learnt how to make the background clone by itself using the code in the spawn manager script instead of just copying it and adding it on the game scene because if I kept copying the background, the process will take too much time and it is harder. The unity tutorials keep getting harder unit by unit since they are different games that we have to create; however, they are really helpful and beneficial especially if my game is related or similar to one of the tutorials we have. I sometimes find it hard to do a challenge by myself without any help but by practicing I hope it will be easier when I get to actually start my own game in unity. My game is about a truck that is trying to reach a point in a specific time by avoiding the obstacles, which is similar to the first unity tutorial; therefore, it was beneficial and I will watch more tutorials so that I know what I am going to do exactly. Doing my own game in unity is going to be a challenge for me but I hope that after practicing the tutorials and doing the challenge that I will be able to do my game easily and in a creative way.
