MultimediaDev2020

Image of illustrated people reading ( source ) In this weeks reading task we were tasked with adding the final touches on our annotated bibliographies, the key areas, in particular, were focused on this week were as follows: Add graphics as required, remember to seek permission or credit Create two digital resources (graphics/audio/video) of your own to support your work. Add author bio  Support editing for final version _ this will be collaborative during the lecture slot) Going through each task individually I found adding graphics to the righting straightforward I made pie charts to display the statistics featured on my writing. The second task was to add an author bio, I found this very clear and concise giving a brief description about myself. the final task was to review the entire writing and fix any outstanding errors and suggestions 

  An image of the unity logo  In this weeks unity tutorial, we had to finalize certain elements of the game. in terms of the build, and distribution I found it really straightforward in terms of overall difficulty. although I did experience a few crashes from the program which was annoying bur a pc restart fixed that problem. Overall I found the unity 2d game creation much more pleasant compared to 3d game creation, the entire process was a great learning experience. I think knowing the different methods for making 3d and 2d games is good knowledge to have. I could defiantly see myself using all the experience I have lernt from these tutorials in the future  In conclusion, I am glad to be finished these tutorials and I thought they were a great learning experience  

  Image of a man reading ( Source ) This week we had to continue expanding our annotated bibliographies, continuing from last weeks task in which we had to create themes based on the summaries gathered from the conducted research. intentionally at the start, I found this week's tasks really straightforward as we had to just write an introduction and a conclusion to or already curated themes.  In practice, I found it rather difficult to actually write cohesive sentences that set up the particular theme I had written about, in the end, I managed to create an introduction and conclusion that fit themes the I had chosen. although it did take a while I am happy with the end product, you can find the full document here

  An image of the unity logo  This week unity tutorial wasn't too bad in terms of difficulty, I didn't find any of the steps too difficult. we had to add a UI element to display Rubys health bar and have it scale to dit the bounds of the game. the scripts were much easier and I understood what they did which is a good sign as that was an area I was struggling to understand for the majority of my unity experience. I also spent some catch up from last week unity which wasn't too difficult too, I'm finding 2D games much easier than 3D games in terms of complexity. in last weeks tutorial, we had to add camera bounds and a camera follow a script. In the end the unity I did find in time-consuming but I think that's due to the fact I had to catch up, I am happy that the end to the tutorials is coming to an end next week.

  An illustration of a woman reading ( Source ) This week we were tasked with acting on the feedback we obtained from last weeks peer to peer reviews. I found the feedback I gained was very helpful in helping me structure and rewrite in other to end with a more polished product. Based on the feedback from lectures and fellow peers I was able to highlight key sections such as my improper formatting of quotes and lack of sentence structure. Another area that was outlined was the absence of key information needed to better explain my themes. this is something I will be putting the majority of my focus on moving forward. Reflecting back now after I have completed this week reading task, I found it much easier than when I started these annotated bibliographies. I think the feedback really helped me on how I would restructure and make it more straightforward. The full document can be found here

  An illustration of a woman reading ( source ) In this week's tasks, we had to define our themes, this is following from last weeks tasks were we had to read over the annotated bibliographies and highlight certain themes we discovered. at first I found this task rather confusing as I wasn't sure how I was going to structure the themes from the papers. I found the video on the CDM website about structuring sentences very useful as it helped me understand the correct format to use. After I had my themes organised I began to write sentences using the methods that I learnt which made it much easier to formulate my thoughts and conclusions. here is a screenshot of my work, the link to my document can be found here

  An image of the unity logo ( source ) In this weeks unity tutorial, we had to continue with the Rudy beginner tutorial. I found this very time consuming and difficult due to the issues I am still experiencing with the unity software. in terms of following the tutorial, I find it straightforward and easy to progress. The issue I'm having is not being able to enter play mode in unity. this is something that I have been experiencing from the start and have tried many troubleshooting methods with no luck. this had led to progress without checking with the play mode which had made it very time consuming as I have to double-check each stage before continuing  other then that, I found the tutorials clear and manageable to complete.

  An illustration for a person reading ( Source ) This week we're tasked with to continue the research on out giving topics, following off from last week I decided to try adding some new papers using google scholar. I spent some time looking for papers using methods that learnt in previous weeks. unfortunately, I didn't add anything new as I already had good variations of thems the the other papers covered.  Next, we had to revisit the paper and online particular themes within the research being conducted, I found the part rather straightforward as I broke down each paper and summarised it last week. this made it much easier to pick out the themes. My annotated bibliography can be found here Here is a screenshot of me highlighting some themes from the papers

  An illustration for a man reading ( source ) At the start of the annotated journey, I wasn't a major fan of writing bibliographies, to begin with, I would blame the lack of knowledge on how to actually write one, this week we were tasked to continue researching and writing up bibliography on our findings. I found the experience much more efficient the second time around, I think have a better understanding of how to correctly write them helped greatly.

  An illustration for a clipboard ( Source ) This week we were tasked to start accumulating our bibliography for choosing topics and make a list of all the usable ones relating to the subject. I started this week by searching for reliable sources pertained to my topic, I used tools like google schooler and the TUD liberty database to help find relevant papers and case studies, I narrowed down the searches by using some of the keywords that I generated last week which greatly help me find more specified and focused results. I used methods that I picked up from this weeks lecture such as reading the summary and conclusion to see if it fit the related subjects that I will be covering in my area of research. After I found a few sources I used tools such as RefWorks to help organise a cite all the different sources. The first paper discussed the effectiveness of implementing emotions in a multi structural system that allows the simulation of different emotional triggering models. the pa...

  An image of the unity logo ( source ) In this weeks unity tutorial, I started to make a 2d game called Rudy adventure, we had to import all the assets and start organising and laying out the different layers of the game. initially, I found the tutorial straight forward at the beginning I did, however, run into a few issue during the work, the main issue was my play mode didn't want to work which caused a few issues.  In conclusion, I enjoyed the process regardless 

  Image Source This week we stoke to the ITB librarian to help us understand all the available resources in place to support us, she talked about refined such tactics such as the "SU Subjects terms", the ITB book database and referencing tools such as RefWorks, a tool the helps catalogue and organise all the reference all in someplace, she also talks about the different bibliography types and how to properly cite quotes from different sources  I also read an interesting blog about " How effective project milestones planning can influence your project’s success". in this blog it talked about different ways to set milestones and gave some example such as " How effective project milestones planning can influence your project’s success" and " What is the impact of this task or event if it meets/doesn’t meet the deadline?" I think these are a useful factor that I hadn't consider and really help me in planning an ineffective strategy for my overal...

             A Screenshot from the detective game (Source) The significance of story narrative in video games Stories were developed from the very beginning to play a specific niche role: encouraging us to follow moral paths, protecting our history and traditions, entertaining and supporting each of us in the grand narrative of human life to appreciate one another and our position. The video game, a new storytelling medium, helps us to take our old and the new stories and reimagine them as playable interactions. This same narrative expression throughout games demonstrates in different ways, from well-designed game stories such The Last of Us (June 14, 2013) and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (May 18, 2015) these games are prime examples of modern storytelling narratives. The main reason these game have successful anecdotes is due to the world-building and concentrates on character development. These aspects contribute to a link between the players and the ...

  Beta Image ( Source ) Being completely honest, working on the game as been the last few weeks has been a difficult and daunting challenge, I find myself spending hours trying to implement new features and game mechanics. it seems like every new feature it breaks something in my game. I've had to rethink my plan of action as a result of this and simplify some mechanics that I have intended to have in order to complete the game in time. okay, now I've got all the negatives out the way this week I worked on my spawn manager that will be tasked with spawning the car obstacles and the barrier obstacles. I got it somewhat working but I still have some bugs like not spawning the cars on the road or not spawn sometimes. another element I worked on was to have the road spawn in also but I had to remove that and make the road a set distance because that broke every other feature in my game. I also added a start screen to the game that will hopefully allow the player to select between ...

 An illustration of game testing elements  ( source ) What is Game testing? Game Testing is a game production sub-suit, is a computer game quality monitoring product testing process, Game testing's primary purpose is to discover and record software defects  (aka bugs). The highly technological area of immersive software entertainment research includes computers, analytical capabilities, essential assessment ability and durability. Most common strategies for game testing Functionality Testing This method of checking is conducted to confirm that the finished product complies with the criteria. QA Testers primarily hunt for generic game or user experience issues such as gaming asset credibility, stabilization difficulties, audiovisual problems and game mechanism problems. Combinatorial Testing You can test the game easily in its earliest stages using this method. The first move is to figure out how much you need to test your game. That is why you can use this special form of...

  A collage of different games ( Source ) What are game stories? A good video game narrative should involve a mix of elements which contributes to the concept and which would give gamers everywhere an immersive and engaging experience. What makes a good game story? There's no magic recipe for a strong video game plot, there's no narrative tool there. One video game will take on the duration of the turn-based battle, taking more than 100 hours, and the player will have no choice but to play it the way it was designed For all these variations, there is also one aspect that any video game has and must consider—a complex player-character. No matter what you want a good video game takes note of this particular dynamic, the dynamics that inform you both the audience, and the main actor, but you can't encourage the main character to do something that the player does not think they're going to do. In other words, the player plays a video game – over a movie, so they want to fee...

    Feedback Looking back at the comments I have received on my blog during the past couple of weeks if I hand to completely honest I am quite happy with the overall quality of the comment I receive in general, most of the comments were very pleasant to read. the majority of the comment I also got extremely constructive crissum on some of my project blogs really helped highlight the weakest area in my project that still needed some work on. The comments that were must useful were one that helped outline the minor issue that I originally looked over and also recommend areas I should potentially consider. In terms of the comment, I left on other people. I would definitely say that I left a good mix of comments in general, I definitely tried to give honest constructive feedback and also trying to also give suggestions on how to improve and develop their idea. The strategy that I tried to implement was the WOW technique or my version of it, I would start by highlighting what happe...

 Looking Back This week we were tasked to look back and reflect reading on previous reading and writing about the impact it has had, in general, I believe the reading tasks have greatly improved the knowledge of games and allowed me to gain a better understanding the fundamental of what makes a game and the processes involved making a game. All the blog so far greatly helped me greatly in terms of helping me understand the mechanics and systems that are needed in a game and the different types of methods the can be implemented to make the game. I have definitely have learnt a lot from engaging each week, learning about different strategies that I found myself utilising in future projects. I am extremely happy with my game project, i think I've made good progress overall and the i found my concept is strong and i have a good direction in mind. The image i decided to choose was i sceenshot i took from the start of my game, the reason i gravitated towards this particular image was the...

  This week we were tasked to make a first playable version of our games, at first I totally panicked as I didn't believe I was anywhere close to that goal yet, but as I started to add more and more small things I quickly realized that had already achieved a great amount and my game was actually coming along better I had anticipated. The things that I focused on this week were expanding my game road map, I added obstacles and added raged body physics and box colliders so that each element can interact with each other. in terms of the player controller I added a player controller script so the play can control the car. I also added a soundtrack of some old-school retro music. Overall I think that my game is kind of playable in lose terms, I still have a lot of stuff that needs to be implemented. Things that still need to be added are: A spawn manager to control the spawning of the vehicle and object obstacles. Refine the car controls and remove the ability to move the car forward an...

  An image with the text "Game Fun" ( Source ) Games can be described by the 3 components Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics (MDA) or otherwise stated as rules – system – “fun”. The three reading selections this week and the synopsis below all address the term “fun” in relation to game design. There are eight types of Fun outlined by the MDA. These eight are both a source of reference and player experience that blend together in many ways, and essentially what makes a game engaging and enjoyable. This deconstructed concept is illustrated in figure 1 below. Figure 1: Eight kinds of Fun Both Oxford and Merrian dictionaries define Fun as an enjoyment, delight but within the context of a game, it refers to a form of pleasurable entertainment. MDA papers define the '8 kinds of fun' sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression, and submission, remain a source of reference and possibly the most popular list of player interactions combining in ...