First Playable

 So from my protoype, I tried out using a map on the plane as a guide in which just got really messy looking and cramped so for my first playable version I used a maze asset in which it made it look a lot prettier.

So, because my whole theme of this game was horror, I want to be able to have it in night mode which ill figure out how to do along the way but right now i'm going to just work on the basics and the C# scripts. Since the walls are very bare I plan to have maybe a big red splash mark along some walls to display "blood" like feature

 So I was having problem with unity once again but I changed from the 2019 version back to the 2018, which was all running smoothly until I went into game mode and pressed play to try and see if my C# of "transform.Translate( 0,0,1);" would work and it froze on me again.

For the moment i'm happy how the maze itself look and my avatar, its very simplistic yet appealing but i will definitely do more design to it 

Im meeting my plan by making sure I have the right steps done for each week and I keep working on my project.                                                                                                                                             Here below is the image of my avatar and the maze, you can see how bare it is but ill be doing more design to it and adding coins for the avatar to collect along with a timer and a small map 

Game Stories

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.

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 various forms to attract each player to a particular game.

Nicole Lazzaro presents four types of fun that are involved in defining how fun a game can be for different players.

• Easy Fun:  This is essentially for players who are new to a game who want to satiate their curiosity. 

• Hard Fun: It is essentially for people who love a good challenge.

• People Fun: Amusement from competition and cooperation. Meaning Co-op. 

• Serious Fun: Excitement from changing the player and their world.

Figure 2: From A Theory of Fun 10 Years On: Fun Is Just Another Word for Learning

Flow also has an influence on the feeling of “fun”. The concept of Flow is characterized as a balance between skill-challenge and the individual's enjoyment. When in flow the player is focused on the activity they are participating in. This gives a sense of reward and promotes further engagement in the activity.

Flow theory provides a good framework for analysing motivation in gaming activities, in particular enjoyment, engagement and positive affect.

Figure 3: Graph showing the flow zone, where the game is not too easy where the players abilities are very high (Boredom), but also not too hard that the player is unable to complete the challenge (anxiety).

Fun has everything to do with learning. “Fun is just the dopamine in our brains firing when we are presented with a new situation to learn from” Koster (2005) discussed about this saying that the different patterns that we take in helps our brain especially when it comes to enjoying a video game cause once you understand the many patterns that it offers you your brain has nothing to feed off making it unenjoyable to play anymore. Fun provides the brain with feedback of the game allowing it to observe and learn different patterns/sequences within. 

Games help people to become more imaginative, engaging with their creative side of the brain and creating new ideas/designs that can be implemented in games.

Being more creative when developing your game will help you see what challenges the player may face and what ones will help further improve the progression and also add to the player's determination to complete the story.

Balance is an even proportion or distribution of elements to keep them at a steady rate. When playing chess, we learn about strategy, tic tac toe teaches us about reading people’s mind about their next move and when we play games like civilisation or sim it teaches us resource management. When playing games we should be provided with a balance of fun and challenges. These are called either type 1 or type 2 games and these have their own unique way of being played. The type 1 games involve strategy and thinking to complete these games such as in Chess or Poker whereas type 2 games mainly involve quick reflexes and combo memorization in games such as “Mortal Kombat and Call of Duty”

The GameFlow model shows that the inherent structure of games is associated with the experience of flow and enjoyment during gaming, at least for strategy games.) As stated by Kaye and Byrce (2012) “a large body of research has investigated the negative effects of playing video games” yet “there has been less examination of the psychological experiences associated with the activity”

We come across different types of fun in games that fulfil our amusement. Fun in games is provided in many different ways for example through socialising with friends or exploring the game world. People experience different emotions when driven by gameplay. Gameplay creates opportunities for “Flow”, “balance” and “learning”. 

References:

Velev, A., 2016. Gamification Design: What’S Fun Got To Do With It?. [online] Megamification. Available at:<http://www.megamification.com/727-2//> [Accessed 16 November 2020].

Kaye, L. and Bryce, J., 2012. Putting The “Fun Factor” Into Gaming: The Influence Of Social Contexts On Experiences Of Playing Video Games. Available at: <https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/9632557.pdf/> [Accessed 16 November 2020].

 

The Game Overanalyser., 2020. A Theory of Fun for Game Design | Raph Koster and The Art of Designing Fun Games. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sZJYA06z7Y&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=TheGameOveranalyser/> [Accessed 16 November 2020].

Unity Tutorial 07

In the unity tutorials for this week, were now on lesson 4.  

In lesson 4.1 we learned a lot about the basic function how to rotate the camera to control the player around the game.

We learned different features like putting a texture wrap on the player by dragging and dropping and also  about the global vs local co-ordinates to set the player to a specific place along with new scripts.

In lesson 4.2 we learned how to make the enemy follow the player around the game.

With new object using physics materials we figured out  how much the object actually bounce off each other and we applied that in the game for the enemies to bounce and defining vectors in 3D space.

 Finally in section 4.3 we added new functionalities to the game, we have an indicator so when they collide with the enemy with power-up on they go flying then after awhile when nothing is near the indicator disappears.

We then figured out how to have our own countdown timers.