Games Testing

For this weeks reading we learned all about testing games and the importance of it as well as learning about criticism. Criticism can come in many forms, some can handle and accept it while others have problems taking constructive criticism.

This article explores criticism in all its forms and gives helpful advice on how to take it. Criticism can be very helpful and useful to those who accept it and use it to improve in their lives. Constructive criticism helps us to show each other where our strong points are and where we could improve. It's highly important to focus on being valid and giving unbiased feedback. It's also important not to let your personal opinion get in the way of the feedback. This article also makes a good point by stating three key things to include when giving feedback. These three things are to make your criticism clear, relevant and understandable. The article then ends by providing a list of tips for carrying out good criticism.

The other article named Level 11:Testing talked about the idea of play testing. It's always vital to be able to play test your own game while also allowing others to be able to play test it. From this we'll be able to know if our game is fully functional and provides us with useful information. This information will be very beneficial to our game.

Overall I found these articles to be very helpful and informative as they taught me a lot about giving and receiving criticism and also game testing and it's importance.

Testing
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Links:
Game tester
TestBytes
Games Criticism

Alpha

For the duration of this week I've been trying hard to further develop my game with Unity and fix some problems that I had in the previous week. Firstly after a lot of trial and error I finally fixed the red scene. Last week my entire game magically turned itself red as I was applying a grass texture and I didn't know how to fix it so this week I focused on that and eventually solved it! My scene appears normal once more. 

I further developed my game this week by creating a variety of old style houses. As my game takes place in a town on an island I had to create a lot of these houses to compose a town type of setting. This took awhile as I've to make an entire town and add windows and doors to the houses. I also created a fog setting which I'm very happy about as I think it turned out very well and adds the creepy effect that I wanted my game to have. It took a while to perfect the fog and get it to the consistency that I wanted but I got there eventually and I'm happy with the outcome. I created more landscape too by adding shrubbery, bushes, creating a different variety of trees and another mountain range. My first person controller is now able to walk freely through the wisps of fog and collect gems. 

My plan now is to continue creating and finishing off my town with more houses and to try add in another sub-character or two. I'd also like to try and find how to create or add in streetlamps so I'll do my research on that this week and hopefully find an answer on how to do it. Below are screenshots of my progress, notice the red scene is fixed! 

My game

Unity free tutorials

This week for the Unity free tutorials I chose two tutorials that I thought would be great assets to my game. The first tutorial I watched was 'How to make a mini map' by Jimmy Vegas. I began by right clicking my player and creating a camera. I then dragged the camera upwards to create a downwards angle on the player. From here I created a render texture to create the mini map. I then went to game objects, UI and created a raw image where I also edited the height and width. Lastly for this tutorial I created a small circle that would indicate where the player is on the map.

The next tutorial I watched was another one by Jimmy Vegas called 'How to create a main menu'. I started in the main camera section where I created a button from the game object section. I then created a play button and a quit button which I scripted for using Javascript to link the buttons. These are the main menu buttons which have two functions. From there I dragged and dropped the script to the game object and applied the script. Finally I was able to create my animated main menu.

I found these tutorials to be very helpful as they really helped me to create important aspects that I'd like to include in my own game. I find that choosing my own tutorials is helping me to further develop my game and get it to a decent standard.

Game
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Game Stories

For this week's reading we were given two articles called "Into the woods: A practical guide to the Hero's Journey" and "What every game developer needs to know about Story". Both of these articles sparked my interest and both were very informative about the topic of the Hero's story. The article that I enjoyed the most was the first one which explored Joseph Campbell's work. 

In this article we explored and dissected the journey that the hero of the story has to go through in order to fulfill a myth. Firstly the question is what practical use is the hero's journey to us as storytellers and game writers? It's important because myths are important, they're how we teach each other how to behave and who we are. Myths are also used to guide actions, The Cry for Myth by Rollo May is used here as an example. This example shows that there's an adaptive advantage to myths. It also goes into the theory of "kin selection" which states that evolutionary fitness gives genes the ability to promote survival and copies of itself. 

Successful tribes were tribes that found ways to encourage everyone to act for the good of the tribe instead of themselves individually. In this article the author also explained what would happen if a myth was taken away from a man. The man would become depressed and mentally ill. Storytelling and literature are the main medias used to tell different myths. Literature proves that there is in fact order in the universe. 

Joseph Campbell also summarized a list of elements of a good myth which included establishing the hero's world, the call to adventure, gaining the hero's prize and finally returning it to the community. Next we learned how to use the hero's journey to build stories which was explained in a number of steps. The first step is to pick a theme and myth which leads to the next step of creating the hero which would be someone who can embody that premise. The third step shows us some characteristics on how to create a good villain. Some of these characteristics include traits similar to the hero, he maybe an outlaw, clever and resourceful, cruel and not forgiving. Step four tells us to show the hero's normal world, the player must see the hero's world that he's trying to save. The fifth step is to disrupt the hero's world, this can be done by taking him out of his normal world and forcing him into action. Next is to enter the mythological woods for the trail of trials. Each level should show the incremental growth. Step seven is to confront the evil one or fight the bad guy. The eight step is to acquire the prize which is the thing worth fighting to acquire. The final step is the hero's return in this part he will return the prize to the community. 

The next part of the article discusses the three act structure and the game designers journey. The designer must pick myths that people would believe and put those myths into the game. The myths that are created have the power to change lives. Finally, the designer must take the hero's journey themselves. 

Links:

Movie Outline

Dan Harmon

Piper

Hero's 

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First Playable

This week using Unity I developed my game further. So far I'm finding Unity a bit difficult as some of the simpler aspects have stopped working since I updated the Unity software to the latest version. Despite this I still tried my best to further develop my game as I'd like to at least make it look how I envisioned it in my game design document.

This week I further developed my game this week by creating a couple of gems which will be hidden in the tall grass and trees within my game. I also successfully added in my chosen background music which I'm fairly proud of as not many things in Unity have worked for me this week! I chose a calm, mellow piece of background music that will loop throughout my game while it's being played.
The textures, materials, music and structures are working well for me.

The main problem I had with Unity this week is unexplained really somehow my game scenery has turned red. This happened as I was adding textures so it might have something to do with that.
My plan for the future week is to hopefully create and structure some more houses on the island as I mentioned in my previous post Unity crashed many times and erased my building structures so I plan on recreating them in the coming week. I also plan on adding some bloom aspects and some sound fx.

This is what my game looked like before it suddenly turned red.

Game image

Week 8 Progress

From browsing through my blog up to this point I can say that I'm very pleased with my progress so far. I've put maximum effort into each blog post every week and into my game design document. I think I've a good weekly routine it's very productive and don't procrastinate when doing my work. Each daily task is clearly laid out and well explained so I just note the requirements and get straight to work.

For the readings each week I begin by reading the entire post as a whole and then I read over it again and make notes on points that I think are important to include in my blog post. I conduct my unity tutorials in a similar way by watching the whole video first then watching them a second time, this time taking notes and pausing them as I work with the tutorials and try to do their content in my own game.

For the project part of the module on the weekends I generally start early every Sunday morning by doing the main part of the project. Once that part is completed I go on to give project feedback to my peers on their Dundoc projects then end by leaving friendly comments on others' blogs. If I've any spare time I would start these on a Saturday.

The class assignments that I enjoy would be the reading each week. I really found the weekly readings to be very helpful and informative as I learned a lot about games, what they consist of, how they work etc. I also just enjoyed writing up the blog post about them afterwards as it helped me memorise the information that I learned from that specific reading. If I've any spare time I try and do at least one of the extra credit options.

I'm happy to carry on this way into the second semester as I feel I've produced some good content by having a solid routine each week. I plan on sticking to this routine if possible in the second semester. Overall I'm very happy with my progress up to this point and I'm proud of myself for getting so far and putting my all into any and every task that I'm given each week.

Motivational image 

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Week 8 comments and feedback

I find that giving comments and feedback to fellow students helps a lot on both ends giving and receiving comments and feedback. From looking at the comments and feedback on my blog posts up to this point I can say that they're all very positive with constructive criticism and suggestions for my game. Many of the comments outline and praise what I've done well and also suggest how I could incorporate different aspects into my game. I've been inspired nearly every week by these comments from other CDM Year 2 students and it's helped me improve my overall performance and motivated me to do my best at this module and other modules in general.

I enjoy reading new blogs from my fellow peers each week and leaving a comment on either their blog posts or on their Dundoc project telling them how great they're doing and making suggestions for their games if they're stuck or unsure of what to include in them. From my personal experience I find the comments that tell me what I'm doing good and how I could implement different aspects or elements into my game to be the most useful as I genuinely find it helpful and become inspired from these comments in particular.

When I'm giving feedback and comments to other students in the class I always like to start by telling them what they're doing great and then stating what I liked in particular and end with making some suggestions with constructive criticism that I hope will be of use to them. My aim is to make the comment as helpful as possible. I'm often inspired by the amount of detail that others include in their posts and projects so I take that into consideration when writing my own posts on my blog or when I was creating my Dundoc.

What I enjoy most about the comments and feedback aspects of this module is that I've gotten to  know a lot more people in the year, bonded with them and started new friendships. I love reading a different introduction post or two each week as I get to know these people much better by learning about how they work, what they like and how they are as a person in general.

Looking back on my introduction post I can sense the nerves of writing my first blog post about myself. It seems a bit too structured and organised instead of free-flowing which is actually the type of person that I am, very laid back and easy-going so I don't think this comes across in my introduction post because I was nervous about people learning about me as a person as funny as that sounds! However it does state everything that I'm about and what I love in life (my cat).

I think my blog comments left by others on my blog are perfectly fine as they are. I find them to be really helpful and useful. I'm actually proud of my blog and the level of content that I included in it as I did my absolute best everyday of each week that we had a blog assignment to do. I think this learning technique should really be used in more modules as it's a fun way of learning while also getting to know your peers and developing new friendships with others.

Friendship image
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