Game Vision Statement

Evergreen

In this blog post I will be discussing my ideas and the vision I have for my new game "EverGreen" through a "Gave Vision Statement". I will be describing my ideas and the design of my game. I chose this name after brainstorming many other names. I looked at other gardening game names to make sure I didn't chose a name that is already being used. I settled on Evergreen because it's short simple and related to nature/gardening. "In botany, an evergreen is a plant whose "foliage remains green and functional through more than one growing season."

Introduction: Evergreen is an arcade/simulation style games suitable for all age groups and abilities to be played on a computer for now but will be developed to be played on a phone/tablet in the future. The player must help miss evergreen to keep her secret garden alive by planting and water her beautiful flowers. This relaxing game is a fun escape form everyday stress and is fun for all the family. Suitable for a wide range of age groups and abilities. It is a fun and simple game to play.

Background: When researching and brainstorming this Idea my original inspiration came from my mother but as I began to develop it I researched other games that have a similar concept . I looked at "Hive and Honey" by Onerat Games (here) a bee and garden simulation game for the pc, "Alice green fingers" by BigFish games (here) a buy and sell gardening simulation game also made for the pc and  Minecraft by Mojang Studios (here) a world simulation game where you can design and create your own world, made for the pc and now can be played on any smart phone or tablet. The games I listed above are the games I kept in mind when deigning my idea, I took inspiration from the game play and design. 

Description: When you the player first opens the game you will be met with Mrs.Evergreen a kind old lady with her gardening get up on. She will then explain the rules to you in a speech bubble, how the game works and what your goal is. You will start with a blank slate of grass. You will be able to control Mrs.Evergreen and help her plant a flower, water it so it will grow to its full potential but make sure you remember to water your flowers properly other wise they will dray up or get flooded and die. Your aim is simple so just enjoy planting the pretty flowers and watching your garden expand. The only time limit you may face is getting the flowers watered in time other than that this game is simply a relaxing escape to your secret garden. 

Key Features: 

• Relaxing music: there will be no change in music tempo or volume at any time during the game I would like to keep a calm environment and not add any pressure with different sounds. 
• Simple Controls: the game will be easy to control so it is able to be played by a wide variety of age groups and abilities this will be an inclusive enjoyable game. I also want the controls to translate well from playing on a computer/laptop to playing on a smart phone or tablet. 
• Game Play: I want the game to be played at a relaxed speed, but not so slow its boring but I do not want Mrs.Evergreen running around the garden like a crazy lady.  

Genre: When I think of this game it seems to fit in to a wide range of genres at first I  thought it was an arcade game but it didn't have some of the features most arcade games have like short levels, high scores and lives. It didn't have the pressure of an arcade game. So now I would describe it as game with a mix of simulation and arcade game features. I would describe it as a fun gardening simulation game for now but as it gets developed I think I could find better words to use to describe it.

Platforms: I think the game concept is applicable to multiple platforms, The game will be developed to play on the PC at first but I think it would easily translate to a game you could play on your phone or tablet as the controls are simple. I intend for this to be a single player game as adding a second player will add a level of competition and that defeats the relaxing, simple aspect of the game.

Concept Art:

(Image one two three and four)

 

UnityTutorial03

During the Unity Task this week we worked on a new project named "Prototype2".It was similar to the first one as it was 3D and used some of the same code so it was too daunting. I started off very confident and sped through the first few videos with no problem but I hit a road block during the last two videos of Unit2-Basic Gameplay (Feed The Animals) Lesson 2.1Player positioning. 

This weeks Unity Tutorial was a struggle for me. I made a mistake during the first tutorial and after going through the whole thing three times I just could not find my mistake. Thats the hard thing about the unity tutorial and just coding in general one letter out of place and my game would not run. I spent the recommended time on this task but I had to stop and take a break as I was getting no where and decided I am going to take a step back and work on another task for week05 and come back to the Unity Tutorial later. If I still can't find my mistake I will just do as much as I can in the videos. 

I have done a few extra credits for this module each week and I have not missed a deadline on any task to date so I'm not worried that this will effect my grand but it is discouraging. I will update the blog later when I attempt the Unity Tutorial again, I think I ma going to have to start from scratch. :(

lern.unity.com

Game MDA

 The first article I read was titled MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research (here).  It discussed MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics) which is an approach taught to people so they can understand  game design and development, criticise games and do technical game search.  This will make it easier to decompose, design and study games.  The MDA framework breaks games into three components 1. Rules 2.System and 3.Fun.  The article continues to break down each components model starting with aesthetics the example they used was "Charades and Quake are both competitive. They succeed when the various teams or players in these games are emotionally invested in defeating each other." The example they use for the dynamic model is "Dynamics work to create aesthetic experiences. For example, challenge 

Mda Frame work

is created by things like time pressure and opponent play." and the example they use for Mechanic is "For example, the mechanics of card games include shuffling, trick-taking and betting ñ from which dynamics like bluffing can emerge." The article wraps up by explaining that by understanding how formal decisions about gameplay impact the end user experience, we are able to better decompose that experience, and use it to fuel new designs, research and criticism respectively.

I enjoyed the video in this weeks learning tasks titled"Explaining the MDA Design Framework | Video Game Design" it explains the MDA framework in simpler term. It gave great examples of how he uses the framework. He also explains how we can put the framework into practice and use it to improve any game we are working on currently.  

Tech Tip: Hashtags and Retweets

 The tweet I retweeted was by a user named Phase two(here), He posted an article by techcrunch.com about how "Pantheon Aims ti take the pain out of collaborative web development with new Multi Dev feature". I found this tweet under the hashtag Multidev. I retweeted this as it got my attention.

The hashtag I chose to explore was hashtag Unity3D as it showed some creators work they have created with the unity software and I just thought it was cool. 

Unity Tutorial 02

Unity Logo

I was plesantly suprised that I enjoyed doing the unity tutorial this week so much, It was a lot easier jumping back into the project we had started last week rather than starting a new one. I was a lot less intimidated by it this week as I knew exactly what to expect and how the tutorials would be laid out. I flew through the "Step Into the Drivers Seat" tutorial in a bout 30 minutes. I was really happy that I got everything to work the first try and feel like I learned a lot this week and was a lot more confident in my abilities to navigate unity. I also liked that the last task of the tutorial was to clean up the code we wrote and to clean up our folders on unity this is going to help a lot with navigating unity during make next weeks tutorial. We also did our First challenge this week, we where given a plane that goes in circles really fast and where given prompts on what to fix to make this game playable. The time set out for this task was only thirty minutes and their was no way I could of got it done in that time. I struggled a lot with this challenge but I suppose its called a challenge for a reason.

Feedback Strategies

The first article I read was "The Difference Between Praise and Feedback" (here) this article bring up the fixed mindset and growth mindset we have discovered in readings over the past few weeks. It talks about how it is better too " focused on the effects of “process praise,” which means praising effort or strategy: “You must have worked very hard on this painting!”. This is to show kids that they will get better at things when they put in effort and try and not to beat themselves up for not getting the right answer but be happy that they where heading in the right direction with their strategies on how to find the answer. 

The interview in this article is  Stanford University’s Carol Dweck who we know has done countless research on Growth Mindset. She explains that sitting with your child encouraging the process and rewarding their efforts is a lot better than just looking at their finished piece of art and saying good hjoob. This teaches them that they do not need to accomplish something to be great or worthy like finishing book but they are a great because they are reading the book and not giving up on it. She also says you should tell your kids their great for taking out the bins because they may feel that is what they need to do to hear praise or be worthy of their pedants love.

manager

The second article I read was "Why Do So Many Managers Avoid Giving Praise?" (here).  This article shows how many managers avoid giving feedback all together because they find it stressful or just unpleasant all together. The article reads "Leaders obviously carry some incorrect beliefs about the value and benefits of different forms of feedback. They vastly underestimate the power and necessity of positive reinforcement. Conversely, they greatly overestimate the value and benefit of negative or corrective feedback". The article is summed up in the last paragraph where it explains it is important to learn how to give positive helpful feedback and praise as well as negative feedback. 

Game Idea Research

Critical Analysis:

In our readings this week (here) we learned about critical analysis and how it can be used to break down the atomic elements of each game and analysis it to find what works and what doesn't. I thought it would be useful to start why each of the three game ideas that I spoke about in my "Game Brainstorm" blog wouldn't work and what I can take from each game idea and incorporate it into my final design. In my develop paragraph I will go on to explain why I chose the game idea I did. 

Princess Peach

Game one: My first idea was basically "a princess who travels across her kingdom dodging evil little minions collecting Books from an old secret library full of knowledge and spells along the way" I toke inspiration for this idea from the Mario franchise as they have created my favourite games But when my lecturer read my idea and gave me feedback he mentioned that it was a bit ambitious to create in just a few weeks and that I might not get it done on time. Thankfully I wasn't going to pursue this idea because I would have been setting myself up for failure but iv full dibs on the idea incase I decide to pursue it in the future. 

Game two: My second game idea was based on a building blocks game in the style of Minecraft where you can pick up and place down blocks. I wanted to incorporate puzzles in the game somehow. I want to take the Minecraft controls as inspiration for my finale design.

wii sport resort

Game four: I really liked the idea of game four but I do think a lot of my other class mates will have similar style and similar concept. It is just a simple airplane game where the player controls the plane and collects something a dodges something else, this will definitely be my back up idea if I can't execute my hopefully finale design. 

Develop:

The game I decided to continue to create and develop is game three. "The aim of the game would be to plant seeds water them and grow flowers to then sell them maybe, with the money you could buy different seeds.The player will be able to control the gardeners movements to walk around, place the seeds where they want, pick up the watering can, collect the flowers ext". I wasn't expecting to like this idea so much, It has no real aims, time pressure or bad guys. Its slower pace and you can't really loose but when I got my feed back and my lecturer mentioned we used games as a distraction I gave it more thought. We use books puzzles and tv as a form of escapism, to relax and enjoy, not everyone enjoys the loud violent games and that's the audience I would like to cater too.    

Game Elements

• Character: A young women gardener.

  

  Gardening

• Objectives/Goals: To take care and grow plants.
• Rules: Keep the flowers alive.
• Information: It's a single player game and they see the complete game state.
• Sequencing: This game will be in realtime and the player can take their actions as they wish as it is a single player games so there is no turns. They must just react when necessery.
• Player Interaction: There will be no player interaction.
• Theme/Setting: The Games location is a simple broad patch of grass with a sunny blue sky. The player is a gardener who's aim is to plant and grow flowers.

Plan:

I plan to create a step by step nine weeks plan when we first start creating our game ideas. This period of time is going to fly in with all my other assignments so I want to have a schedule so I don't fall behind or run out of time. I have simplified my idea and I will have done a lot of prep and plan work before I actually start to make my game so this shouldn't be a problem .

Game Elements

In this week reading we are learning how to "dissect and analyse a game" by reading about its component parts and how they all fit together. The First Paper "What are the qualities of a game" discusses the atomic elements of a game they parts they listed where: 

• Players
• Objectives/Goals
• Rules
• Resources
• Game-state 
• Information
• Sequencing 
• Player Interaction
• Theme
• Game as System 

  

  Game Clipart
  

The article discusses how you can break a game down into these parts to study individually. The article then goes on to discuss critical analysis not as a negative thing but as a useful tool for discussing and comparing games, to find out why you like a game and how to use that in a new game design. 

I really enjoyed the video (here) in this weeks reading task as I am much more of a visual learner and it helped watch the two game designers break down the game idea process into simple steps that you wouldn't even realise where so important. The demonstrated a few of the steps they take to visualise the playing on the game. They started with simply just making the game from paper, they said this was important to get the game into the prototype stage as soon as possible. They then made their way up to playing ping pong in different ways as the game they where developing was a ping pong style. 

Feedback Thoughts

 As soon as I saw the reading list for this weeks task "Project Feedback" I clicked straight into "Why Rejection Hursts So Much" this article intrigued me straight away, it is a question I never thought to ask myself. The quote used to sum up the article was "The greatest damage rejection causes is usually self-inflicted. Just when our self-esteem is hurting most, we go and damage it even further". This made me think a lot, I didn't under and it first but then the article goes on to explain the the self inflicted damage dates back to caveman and it was a survival instinct to make sure you didn't get kicked out of the pack so and it has stayed with us through school when we didn't want to get kicked out of our friend groups and be alone and even to this day in this course when we have to do group work no one wants to be not picked or put in a group of people you done really know because you where iced last. It visna really interesting pattern in human behaviour. 

The second article I read was "seven ways to crush self doubt in creative work", the seven ways where:

• Don't compare yourself to others
• Abandon perfectionism
• Be countable to a trusted community
• Embrace a groth minset
• Set goals that are within your control
• Treat you work like an experiment 
• Trust yourself

This article I also think everyone should read it relates a lot to the self doubt and self destruction mentioned in the "Why rejection hurts so much" the author gave numerous personal examples of how he has gone against all these rules in the past you can see his self destructive patterns. It is a very useful trait to have to be able to stop self doubt as it can hold us back more than we realise and cause regret. 

Although the two articles where about self doubt and rejection I see feedback as a positive tool to help you grow and be successful in your learning. I also think everyone needs to face rejection a few times in their life one to know how to handle it and turn it into a life lesson and two to keep then grounded and learn how to give out rejection without being hurtful. 

Feedback image from google

Game Brainstorm

In the four game ideas I have pitched below their is inspiration taken from some of my favourite games as a kid. I have not yet worked out he logistics of each game these are just ideas/starting points. I have read through two or three of my classmates blog posts on this same subject to make sure my ideas are original and realistic. 

Game idea one: 

As I mentioned in my "Favourite game" blog post (here) the Mario franchise created my favourite games as a kid and probably to this day. I liked the basic 2D games they made but when when I played Mario galaxy I was mind blown seeing the Mario characters in a 3D world, it was a game changer. Obviously a game in space with huge animated bad guys and lots of different words is a bit too ambitious for a beginner but I really like the basic idea and rules of Mario. The simple concept of controlling where you run, dodging or killing bad guys and picking up coins. I kept this idea in mind when coming up with my first game idea and want to Create a game with this is mind. I would like to have a protagonist in my game based on a strong female character. I would also like a few obstacles/bad guys and a motive/aim/reward.

My main protagonist will be a princess with blonde long hair (I'm basically making a game about myself because why not?). It will be based in history maybe the 8th century with knives and castles. She travels across her kingdom dodging evil little minions collecting Books from an old secret library full of knowledge and spells  along the way making her more powerful. Her aim is to reach a castle to claim the thrown from the king, or something along those lines. I would like to make the game continuous she will constantly run forward but the player will control her direction and be able to make her jump. I imagine this game being played on a pc where you could use a mouse and arrow keys to control the game. This concept is basic but I think it would be fun to create and play. 

Game Idea Two: 

My second game idea I want to draw inspiration from puzzles, when we first started talking about games we like to play and want to make I mentioned some of my favourite games to play on my phone are 1010, sudoko and candy crush but when I read the first document of our Reading Week03 task labelled "What is a game anyway" I realised these are more puzzles than games. The quote read "Costikyan  says they are not games, although they may be contained with in a game". This gave me the inspiration for a game that is fun to play but still has the challenging  and rewarding aspects of a puzzle. My inspiration was draw from Minecraft, a game I used to play when I was younger. My brother was obsessed with it mining and hunting for food and supplies but I just liked to put it in creative mode and build my dream world with the endless supplies. I was also scared of the monsters and the sound effects in survival mode. With this in mind I would like to create a game inspired by the building and creativity of Minecraft and add some puzzle in there. I want to have a simple background works of just grass and sky, the character can be just a regular Joe. To start the player will be given a picture or blueprints to a structure like a house or a tree simple things to start and it will get harder throughout the levels, It will stay somewhere on screen for reference. Then they will be given the materials to make this structure starting on level one with maybe only four or five "building blocks"or shapes like a roof or a window, more will be added throughout the levels. The aim of the game is to pick these up and place them in the right order to create the picture they were given at the start. I like the freedom in Minecraft of picking up and placing the blocks where you want and being able to move around the world, this game idea has a similar style.

Miro board I created to brainstorm

Game idea three:

For my third game idea I thought about our reading week three task "What is a game anyway?" the interviewee in Annakaisa Kultimas paper who said to look around during everyday life. So for this game I drew inspiration from my mother. From a young age when I image imagine my mother I picture her in my back garden gardening. During the spring summer months my Mam thrives because one of her favourite hobbies is gardening. She loves buying planting and potting flowers. She does our back garden up every year, she loves sitting out the back in the morning to drink her coffee. So with all of this in mind I would like to make a gardening game. The aim of the game would be to plant seeds water them and grow flowers to then sell them maybe in a market or the character can own a florist. With the money you make you can then buy different types of seeds the need differentiations levels of care and sell for more money. The controls of the player will be able to control the character/gardeners movements to walk around, place the seeds where they want, pick up the watering can, collect the flowers ext. The players can simply pick things up and place them down. Im not that sure how I would add pressure to the game, the better you do the more money and seeds you can get but I can't think of how their could be a danger or consequence. Maybe the flowers could drown if overwatered or die if they don't get enough water. This idea is very simple and sounds a bit childish  but I think it would be very calm and satisfying to play which I would much rather than a loud violent game.

Game idea four:

I struggled a lot coming up with a fourth game idea. I knew what my first three would be as soon as I saw the task but I couldn't seem to think of a third one. I decided to ask around, I started by looking at a few of my friends blogs to get an idea of what was expected of us, I read Seans and Mellisa's blogs. They both had amazing ideas but the one the got me and almost made me nostalgic was Seans first game idea paragraph where he discussed the Nintendo wii and wii sports. This was a huge thing in my house hold, every Christmas we played the wii and my favourite game was wii sports resort my favourite thing to play was the airplane game where you went through the hoops and flew all around the wii sports resort island. I would like to make a game inspired by this where the player controls a glider or airplane up in the sky. They have to dodge birds, hot air balloons, thunder clouds etc and collect something like coins to buy more parts for their plane and make it better as something to work towards. The plane could purposely go through gusts of wind to get a little boost. Like my other game ideas I feel like this is a bit simple and happy but they are the games I like to play myself and I think they would be fun to design and create.

Unity tutuorial 01

I have just finished / given up on my first set on unity tutorials. I was originally intimidated when I first opened up unity it is a lot to take in at first but the way it is broken down into step by step videos that are a few minutes long makes it a lot easier for beginners like me. The videos are a bit slow so I had to up the speed to 1.75 which helped a lot. After about two hours I got to the the third video of 1.2Pedal to the Metal tutorial where you are asked to double tap the scrip to open it on visual studios, as this is a Microsoft programme I couldn't download it onto my Mac book, I tried to download the other suggested programme but it didn't work. I continued to watch the rest of the videos so I didn't fall behind or get confused next week.  

I took a break from my computer to have dinner and it dawned on me I could use brackets as my programme. So I was able to go back and finish the tutorials. Once I did this I actually enjoyed using brackets and felt relieved and satisfied once I had it complete. Moral of the story is don't spend seven hours staring at your computer or your brain will be fried. At lead i'll know now for next week. 

A screen shot I took half way through the unity tutorials.

Game Design

 The aim of this weeks reading was to understand what a game is and what are the elements that make it a game. I read the paper "what is a game anyway?", I'm this reading it broadly answered that question. It explained the definitions of a game and then proceeded to explain the weakness in these definitions and how different people may interpret them. It played out the criteria of a basic game, what rules and motivation is needed for the participants to play. I then read and followed along with the "Lets make a game" segment of the reading which did what it intended to do and get me over my initial fear of being unable to create a game. It helped me create the most basic game. I went a step further and did my own research and ready this page on what's the difference between games and puzzles, as I have always roped them into the one category.The table clearly lays out the difference.

 I also read "Four basic methods for Generating Ideas" This was a useful reading as it explained the step by step process of how to generate a game idea. Which four simple methods

•  Concentration "You merely think until you have an idea"
• Brainstorming "it is essential that the group of people for the brainstorming be as diverse as possible"
• Scamper "set of techniques that the game designer changes in turn until he finds his idea'
• Ramsey " take a significant amount of information and start looking at it closely and manically, you can find new information or find inconspicuous links"

Time strategies

 My thoughts on time engagement strategies is that we all have the same amount of hours in a day and everyone gets to choose how to spend them, some people just spend them better than others.

The first article i read was "The Important Habit Of Just Starting" by Jory Mackay. The lines that stood out to me most where   "Procrastination isn’t just simply us putting off things until a later date. It’s purposefully putting aside important work knowing there will be negative consequences in the future.We aren’t just being forgetful, or complacent. We’re purposefully hurting ourselves by focusing on short-term pleasure at the cost of the long-term." This really made me think, why do we do this to ourselves, set our selves up for an uncomfortable situation, or a bad day? we are all guilty of it, especially when it is something you don't particularly enjoy or want to do. When we know when its done we wll feel so much better rather than letting it sit in the back of our minds. 

The second article i read was The Psychology of Checklists by Lauren Marchese. This one i completely agree with and have used for years especially during lock down. I made a checklist every night for the next day with time stamps and the smallest thing i wanted to get done. I put the smallest tasks on their like breakfast lunch and dinner so i had  something to complete. This gave my day structure, kept me in routine as well as giving me motivation and keeping me busy. It also kept me off my phone and helped so much with my mental health during g lock down. Instead of lying in bed all day watching Netflix i wad reading three books a week, cooking and exercising. I was peaking. with so much time on my hands I felt so productive and did things iv pushed off for moths like painting and re-doing my whole room. All from a simple checklist. 

Technology

This task was surprisingly useful to see what tools we will be using and learning. I think in this day and age it is especially important to grow your technology skill set for future opportunities, I agree with the not putting everything up on moodle, i really hope after this course i will never have to look at it again. I am not very familiar with the technology tools mentioned but i have heard of them before. This online environment is unlike other classes, it is a lot more independent learning and in your own time than other classes which i like. Not as much step by step together learning which can be frustrating for people who want to speed ahead and people who need a bit more tie to catch on to new skills. everyone learns at their own pace. I want to work and deelop all my technical skills this semester .

 

course websie

Assignments First Impressions

I am really happy with the lay out of the multimedia development module this year. I am impressed with the thought and preparation our lecturer has put into the module layout to make our lives easier. I am so happy with the flexibility and that we know exactly what is expected of us this year. This is probably the only module that has adapted and taken into consider the current situation of the students. 

I am intrigued by the unity3D assignments, I already find them challenging but im excited to learn a new skill. I am also intrigued by the reading we will be doing and how they will relate to our module. I enjoyed the growth mindset reading so those extra credit assignments cought my eye.

Unity Logo