Unity Tutorial 06

Unity Tutorial 06

Lesson 3.1 - Jump Force

This tutorial was relatively easy to follow, however I encountered some coding problems here. For some reason, when coding the collision in order to identify when the player is on the ground, the player only registers as being on the ground at the start of the jump and when the player lands it doesn't register as being on the ground anymore. I tried to fix this and put in my code exactly as the tutorial and I can't exactly figure out what's wrong so the player is stuck that way for now. I also had an issue where the obstacles would fall through the map and into the void and I am unsure of how to fix this. However, I did learn handy code such as how to prevent the player from double jumping and also how to move a whole scene left.

Screenshot of my Unity project

Source: My laptop

Lesson 3.2 - Make the World Whiz

The coding to make the background repeat and seamless worked flawlessly and is fully functional! This is really useful in many elements but especially platformer style games. However, when the player hits an obstacle it does not register, so the Game Over script along with the stop scrolling does not work- but the code is implemented so if the player did register being hit then the code should work no problem.

Screenshot of my Unity project

Source: My laptop

Lesson 3.3 - Don't Just Stand There

This tutorial was very useful as it explored more in depth character animation and how to add them to the character. I learned how to navigate the animator component, and how to adjust values such as the speed of the running animation in order to make it match the speed the background was moving. Again, I had trouble with animating the dead player animation as the player does not register if it hit an obstacle, but the running and jumping animations worked fine!

Player running animation

Source: My Laptop

Unity Tutorial 04

Unity Tutorial 04

Tutorial 2.1- Player Positioning

I found this tutorial relatively straightforward as it was mainly script based and we have used the majority of the script shown in the previous tutorials. It did confuse me at one point through due to changing the values to xRange and I had to recheck the code several times because I kept getting errors (it was only for simple things like accidentally forgetting a semi-colon though). Overall I found this tutorial useful as it taught me how to add range to a players movements which prevents them form falling off the map.

Screenshot of my Unity tutorial

Source: My laptop

Tutorial 2.2- Food Flight

This tutorial was a little trickier than the first as it involved creating prefabs and destroying them when they go out of bounds, which is something I don't think I've explored much before. This tutorial took me a little longer to code and understand but the nature of these tutorials are to make it easy to follow so I got there eventually. I liked learning how to launch the steaks when pressing the spacebar and I like how it destroys them when they go out of bounds to make the game less laggy. 

Screenshot of my Unity workspace

Source: My laptop

Lesson 2.3- Random Animal Stampede

This tutorial was the hardest of the three for me- the code for the random spawn and positioning of the animals didn't want to work for me no matter how much I tried. I managed to get the animals to spawn when you change the index in the inspector, but I couldn't manage to get the code for the random spawns to work. I spent quite a while on this- my Visual Studio says that there's no issues with the code but Unity says otherwise so I'm at a loss. I'll have to revisit this at a later date to see if I can understand what the issue is and fix it.

Screenshot of my Unity space

Source: My laptop

Reading 3 - Starting my Research

Reading 3 - Starting my Research

For this weeks reading I started my research on my first topic- creating my own research matrix to fill out and using available resources to locate journals and articles to gather and read.

Admittedly I struggled a lot at first with this- I was totally lost with the matrix as it confused me and I had no idea what to fill in where, but after clearing it and starting to read and compile some articles it became clearer.

I used Google Scholar, SpringerOpen and Sage Research Methods to find relevant articles and papers by searching using my keywords/key sentences I created last week. When I found a relevant article, I first read the abstract to see if it covered anything relevant to my topic. I then went on to read the conclusions to see if there was any useful topics covered within the reading. If I found there were relevant things in the abstract and conclusion, I skimmed through the readings and read the sub headings to see if there was anything relevant. I then started to fill in my Matrix with relevant, simplified information based on my readings.

Getting a start on my research matrix

Source: My laptop

I explored numerous resources and articles in search of useful information, but came across lots that weren't relevant to my topic. However, I did come across some useful articles and papers.

This paper explores in depth different elements of narrative structure and design, and how these give way to unfolding a story. It explores plot setup, development, complications and resolutions and how to apply these to the gameplay to satisfy the player experience. It goes into narrative in television, film, theatre etc. and has a lot of elements that aren't relevant to my topic but it has some useful tidbits in it. There are some interesting points on player immersion and player driven plots in here also that may be helpful when reading further.

This article explores the idea of The Hero's Journey- a commonly used plot structure which has proven successful and is used in games such as "The Legend of Zelda". The main focus in this plot structure is the main protagonist, the hero, who's world is thrown out of order by an evil entity who the hero in the end must defeat to restore order to the world. This article contains lots of relevant content and is a great example of common plot structure. It shows while this structure is commonly used, it can be widely successful and gives good points on how to advance the plot.

Here are all the articles and papers I have compiled thus far- I read their abstracts, conclusions, and skimmed their subheadings and noted them if I found anything or relevance for my topic.

• https://rke.abertay.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/16652199/King_ImplementingDramaManagment_Published_2019.pdf
• https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8742555
• https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JoshNewland/20150624/246930/Games_and_interactive_storytelling.php
• https://summit.sfu.ca/item/18578
• https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130742/into_the_woods_a_practical_guide_.php?page=2
• https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130770/what_every_game_developer_needs_to_.php?page=2

Unity Tutorial 03

Unity Tutorial 03

This week's Unity tutorial explored making a movable vehicle the player can control and steer to hit or dodge the obstacles on the road using C#, and the second tutorial was a challenge to use our knowledge to fix the movements and camera of a plane.

I found the first tutorial easy to follow along and good at explaining the process and code, though I personally have a hard time remembering exactly what each code does therefore I always have to refer back to tutorials or sample code to get things to work. I picked up a bad habit of just using existing code and not trying to learn how it works that I need to get out of.

Screenshot of my code in Visual Studio

Source: My laptop

I really enjoyed piecing the code together to create a movable vehicle! It was satisfying to watch it go from automatically speeding down the road to actually being able to control it and to dodge or ram into the obstacles on the road. You can even drive it off the road and have it plummet into the void which is always amusing too.

Screenshot of vehicle in playmode

Source: My laptop

The second tutorial was much trickier since it wasn't actually a tutorial, but a challenge. The goal was to fix the code and position of the camera in order to make the plane move forward at a good speed and to be able to manually tilt it and have the camera follow the plane.

I got the hang of it pretty quickly and referenced back to the other tutorials to fix the code, and I adjusted the camera and made it follow the plane and managed to complete the challenge by fixing the errors!

It made me realise I learned a lot more than I thought from the previous tutorials!

Fixing the camera position

Source: My laptop

Me struggling to get a screenshot of flying the plane

Source: My laptop

Moving forward I'm looking forward to exploring further into player controls and camera movements as I feel it's very important for the players and can make a game more enjoyable to have good controls of movements and the camera!

Unity Tutorial 02

Unity Tutorial 02

This week we dived back into Unity tutorials- this time official Unity tutorials instead of Jimmy Vegas ones. It was a little weird to hear a different voice guiding me through the various tutorials, but I got used to it pretty quick.

With these tutorials I learned how more advanced controls for viewing objects and placing objects in the scene with utilising the Ctrl and Alt buttons. I also never knew that simply pressing F with an object selected the view would snap to it- definitely a handy one.

The tutorials also explored creating custom layouts along with editing the colour preferences to change the tint of the playmode to make it clearer so that you don't accidentally make changes in the playmode and have it reset when you go out of it which I found very useful.

And of course, I learned how to create a moving vehicle that collides with obstacles and sends them flying along with a player camera that follows the vehicle.

Screenshot of my Unity setup

Source: My laptop

I found the tutorial very helpful especially in creating the scripts as it was very clear in what needed to be coded and explained very well- I actually had no problems with getting it to work which is a first! I also had some fun messing around with the object weights- I made the crates heavier than the vehicle which resulted in the vehicle to go flying instead for a bit of a chuckle.

Screenshot of my playmode tint

Source: My Laptop

I didn't actually find anything difficult this time around with the tutorials so I must have followed it very well! I learned a lot of new tricks to make my life easier navigating the scene and objects and learned some more scripts that will surely help in the future.

I'm looking forward to learning more new things through the tutorials to further my knowledge and allow me to develop different types of games than to the survival styled one I made before!

Reading 2: Planning my Approach!

Reading 2: Planning my Approach

Welcome back to my blog!

It’s exciting to get back into the swing of things, especially now that we’re planning on creating a book on game design together. I’m excited to work with you all again and to learn more about academic writing and further into the topic of game design!

For my writing topics I picked two from the storytelling chapter- “mechanisms for advancing the plot” and “scripted conversations and dialogue trees”. Many players tend to connect with games through their plot and characters so I’m excited to explore this further.

To help me conduct my research, I had to think of a research question. To do this, I thought of my topics and asked myself who, what, where and why to narrow down and focus on topics to research as part of my literature review. There are lots of questions that could be explored with these two topics; here are some I thought of:

1.       Is it necessary to have complex characters to aid a plot-line?

2.       How does character dialogue impact the plot of a game?

3.       How does character dialogue impact the player?

4.       Do players connect with well developed, complex characters more than simpler characters?

5.       Does something bad always have to happen to advance a plot?

6.       Do dialogue trees personalise and enhance the player experience?

7.       What are the effects of choice in scripted conversations?

8.       What are the most common ways to advance a plot-line?

9.       Does player choice matter in dialogue trees?

10.   How do unexpected twists affect a plot and its players?

Taking these questions into account, I refined them further. I combined some questions to give way for deeper analysis and research potential for both topics, and I think they would be interesting to explore!

For mechanisms for advancing the plot, I picked the question “What are the most common ways to advance a plot, and how does breaking the norm affect the player?”

For scripted conversations and dialogue trees, I picked the question “How does character dialogue impact the plot and does player choice in dialogue matter?”

Research illustration

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Readings in the past such as the hero’s journey plot structure stuck out to me when thinking of the first question, while my own experiences in games such as Telltale’s “The Walking Dead”, “Detroit: Become Human” and “Until Dawn” inspired me to explore the effect of player choice in dialogue and how it can impact the plot.

I have mentally ticked off the research question checklist for both of my questions and they all fell under “yes”, so I think I followed the steps in coming up with my questions well.

Some keywords that I can use to help me research are:

• Dialogue
• Dialogue tree
• Dialogue affect
• Dialogue impact
• Scripted conversation
• Character conversation
• Character interaction
• Butterfly effect
• Plot
• Game plot
• Plot mechanics
• Advancing plot
• The hero’s journey
• Common plots
• Plot twists
• Plot importance
• Plot impact

Tools I could use when conducting my research are the TU Dublin library, the library on our own campus, Google Scholar and other journals and reviewed articles available on the TU Dublin library site and on the internet.

I’m looking forward to getting a start on my research and exploring my chosen topics further!

Thank you for reading my blog!

Eterna Hunt Beta

Eterna Hunt Beta

I have been working towards making a complete beta for my game "Eterna Hunt" over the course of this module, with some success but lots of difficulty.

Here are some screenshots from my current beta.

Screenshot of Eterna Hunt

Source: My Unity Project

Screenshot of Eterna Hunt

Source: My Unity Project

Screenshot of Eterna Hunt

Source: My Unity Project

I updated and tweaked my map a little bit and added trees and grass and path textures to make the map feel less boring and more fleshed out. I updated my UI and added a timer element to the game, though with little success. I spent quite a lot of time looking at tutorials and sample code and none of it worked for me. Speaking of script, I also spent hours trying to fix my health script. I managed to fix the code so now the player health goes up when they collect hearts, but for some reason the hearts in the UI don't update.

The spider enemies function perfectly well and look, move towards the player and attack the player however the damage script is not working. Again- I tried to figure this out for quite a while but to no avail.

I made multiple enemies and collectables and scattered them throughout the map- so the game would be perfect as of right now if the code was working.

I'm aware that a beta is supposed to have bugs ironed out but with my laptop being so slow and my lack of knowledge of scripts I did what I could towards building a beta.

I am meeting my targets by working on my project every week and implementing new features and updating the map and existing features towards creating a playable finished game. I am using my existing knowledge from tutorials and readings in order to create my game.

Overall I am pleased with my progress despite the setbacks and complications- as I am a complete beginner to Unity and game development I'm surprised I've made it so far. I hope that one day I figure out how to code so that my game can be fully functional and live up to my original vision.