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.