Aaron Hogan

Game Design Document Game Introduction  'ROAD TO KICK-OFF' is a game following a footballer who needs to get ready for his big match. The idea of the game is your the footballer and controlling him and trying to find 10 items that he needs for his match, for example football boots or shin-pads. Once you've collected and found all 10 items you will be ready to play your big game. Genre: The genre of the game is adventure because you've to go on a big adventure to try and collect all the items. The game is going to be a fun adventure for the player. GamePlay: The gameplay is going to have one player be a 3D game. The rules are simple, just to collect the 10 items needs. The player will be controlling the player around the area looking for hidden items. The challenge is to get all the items. Target audience & platforms: The target audience is for any ages between 3-14. This game is very easy to be able to play but is also good for younger children to be ab...

Unity Tutorial 05 This week , I watched three videos on Unity. The videos are 'tutorial 6,7 and 8'. I enjoyed these tutorials as I do every week, but one thing I wish was that the tutorials were the same as last week, when it was just text and screenshots instead of videos. I don't know why but I feel like it is easier for me to keep up and follow the tutorials when their in text form instead of videos. I found 'tutorial 07' to be the most exciting and interesting tutorial out of all of them. I found a connection to this tutorial because I like in game when there are weapons involved.  Although, it was confusing to get the understanding of everything needed to make the weapon move and work perfectly. It took me a while to get the everything working to get the weapon to work but I got there eventually. It is a great benefit for me to know how to add weapons into a game because I'm sure in the future that if I was making a game that I would like to implement w...

Feedback Strategies This week, I read two articles about feedback strategies to improve my feedback skills. The first article I read was called' Five Reasons to stop saying "Good Job!"' by Alfie Kohn. This article was a great read. Here are some reasons he suggests to stop saying "Good Job": Manipulating children:  A "Good job!" to reinforce something that makes our lives a little easier can be an example of taking advantage of children’s dependence. Kids may also come to feel manipulated by this, even if they can’t quite explain why. Telling a good "good job" doesn't show much emotion to them after they've done something positive like not spilling their drink when drinking. Creating praise junkies:  In short, "Good job!" doesn’t reassure children; ultimately, it makes them feel less secure. Sadly, some kids might grow up looking for people to praise everything good they do. Reduces Achievement : If the parent ...

Games GDD I read an article called 'Design Considerations' by Greg Aleknevicus, here's a link to the article: http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/DesignConsiderations.shtml . He gives us tips on improving the UI and rules for writing for board games. A good game doesn't need good components but it doesn't do any harm to have them. The list of components Greg said are good to be used are: Make tiles smaller than the spaces they're placed upon: If your game has pieces beside each other, it's better if their smaller so if you move a piece it won't disturb the rest  of the pieces. Use highly contrasting/distinguishable colours for player pieces: It's a good idea for your game to include colour so it is easy for the players to distinguish between the pieces easily, but it is wise to not choose colours that look a bit a like for example, red and orange. Use shape as well as colour to distinguish pieces: It is a good idea to have shapes in you...

Game Vision Statement This week for my progress on my game design project, I read and learnt about vision documents. I read an article called "The anatomy of a design document, part 1 : Documentation guidelines for the game concept and proposal". I enjoyed reading this article as I feel like it benefited me as I learned new things about game designing that I never knew went into the development of a game. I didn't think as much detail and research went into making a game before starting my journey into making a game but after reading this article, I realised there's a lot of information to know about. The purpose of a documentation for a game is to communicate your vision in detail. It helps the programmers, designers and artists to know what their supposed to do instead of asking. Adding specific guidelines will benefit your project. Theres 4 reasons for adding guidelines :  - Elimination of hype: guidelines eliminate hype by forcing the designers to define th...

Unity Tutorial 03 In this tutorial for this week,  I had to create a clock on Unity.  I thought this type of tutorial was easier to follow, I felt like I worked better doing the tutorial with screenshots and text  rather than watching a video. I just find it easier in my opinion to work on the challenge while looking at screenshots. This was the most enjoyable tutorial I've done because it was easier to follow the steps than the other ones. I'd much rather steps in this form than videos in the future. I found while I was doing the tutorial that I would miss a word or two a few times while filling out the script, which would not make it work the way I wanted to and I wouldn't know where I was going wrong with the tutorial but I realised after a few minutes that I missed a word in the script.  I also had a problem with creating the arms on the clock but after a few tries I got it to work. Other than that I really enjoyed this tutorial and I was happy to see my clo...

Game Idea Research This week I have to choose a game from my last week ideas and do research on it. The game I have chosen to go forward with is the 'Multiple choice' game. I want to go ahead with this game as it interests me to figure out how I can make this game work. The first part of my research for my multiple choice game was to google 'Multiple choice game design'. When I googled this I found out a lot of information on multiple choice. I found a very good article called '5 Rules For Writing Interesting Choices In Multiple-Choice Games?'. The 5 rules that are included are :  - Every option should have real consequences : This is important because if the decision has no effect then why should the player even choose - The player needs some basis to make a decision : The player needs to know what the backstory of their choice is and what will happen - No option should be obviously better or worse than all the others : This is important to keep the play...

Unity Tutorial 02 For this weeks unity tutorial, I watched two videos, the first one being called 'HOW TO MAKE A GAME FOR FREE #004-IMPROVE GRAPHICS'. I enjoyed watching this tutorial as it helped me with many tips and tricks. One thing that I found rather difficult about this was the coding. I have used coding before in my Web Dev last year and this year so I am quite familiar with it but I still found it hard enough at the start to get used to everything and where it goes but I eventually got the hang of it in the end.It's very difficult to understand how everything comes together to actually make the game work. I really like the realistic side of this tutorial that you can add to the game. When I added the wall into my game, I could use the right hand side of the window to play around with settings such as Metallic and smoothness of the wall to make it look more realistic.The second tutorial I watched was called 'HOW TO MAKE A GAME FOR FREE #005- RAYCAST'.Th...

Game Elements In my reading for week 4, I read and learnt about 'what are the elements of games?'. I enjoyed this read as I learnt a lot of valid information. The first element I read about was player. -Player:   A game needs a player for it to work. The amount of players can vary from 1 player to 2-15 players. There's many types of player structures when it comes to a game, two examples are, Head-To-Head: this is when its 1v1 eg, chess. Another example is one-against-many: eg, Build-up chasing which is chasing but every time you catch someone they join you.There are much more types of player structures, so here's a link to some more: https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-3-dot-1-1-players -Objectives(goals): Every game has a goal/objective in it weather it be to cross a finish line or save a friend from evil bosses. every single game has to have a goal for the game to work properly and for the game storyline to make sense. -Rules:  There are...

Feedback Thoughts In this blog I will be talking about feedback thoughts and what I learnt. The first article I read was called 'Why it's so hard to hear negative feedback'. What I learnt from it was that when you receive feedback that you have to trust that everyone is giving you feedback to better you and not to try make you angry or upset about what they say. They give you it so you can better your work and to improve from your mistakes. I learned that when you're giving feedback is that you should do it openly and in a nice manner so the person doesn't get offended. I learned to just don't take feedback to heart and don't take it personal. The second article I read was 'why rejection hurts so much- and what to do about it'. I learned about how are brains are wired to automatically damage our self-esteem when we are rejected. The trick to get over it is to have zero tolerance for self-criticism. For rejection, you should avoid thinking all the ...

Game Brainstorming Idea 1: My first idea for a game is to have a game with multiple choices and lots of different outcomes. I had the idea to start the game off with a young kid about 7-10 years old facing a few doors, number of doors can vary depending on the life situation, for example, the kid could be facing a two doors, one door with a football icon on it and the other door with a video game controller on it. This gives the player the choose to pick between two situations, both leading to different outcomes, for example, if the player chooses the football icon that could mean the kid ends up becoming a sports player or if the player chooses the video game controller door then the kid could become a professional video game player or someone who just wastes his time playing games and not being productive which could harm him in the future. When the players chooses a door, the next part will be a scene that shows what that choice has done to change or do to the kids life.The gam...

Game Design An image of a killer in a game. Image source: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/game-design-cards-killer-green-4268961/ The first reading I done was on "what is a game?". I learned about the game "three to fifteen", when I first read about the game I thought I didn't know it when it was being described but as soon as I say the image of the game, I instantly knew it was a different version of X & O's. It had the same outcome as it but there was just a few differences between the game but overall they are the same game in a way. This showed that there are many games that are similar but even with one tiny difference can make the two games not the exact same.  I read something in the first reading that basically said how if we were to describe a game to someone we know, that we would describe it by comparing it to another game of similar gameplay. That was interesting to read because I never realised how true it is.  I read an article...