Aaron Hogan

Wikipedia Trail 1.   Video Game: I started off with this search as a lot of our work is based on games and I thought this would be a good place to start off. Here is the link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game#Genres 2. Nintendo: I choose Nintendo next as I knew it was one of the biggest game companies and I knew it would have a lot of good links to it.  Here is the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo#Marketing 3. Nintendo DS: I choose Nintendo DS as it was a console I grew up with as a kid. I used to play loads of games on it like my favourite Nintendo game Super Mario.  Here is a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS 4.List of best-selling game consoles: I choose this link as I was curious as to what console sold the most consoles ever. The answer is the PlayStation 2. I also used to play PS2 when I was growing up so this is pretty cool to see.  Here is a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game...

Tech Task: Creating A Meme For this weeks tech task, I decided to make a meme about myself that has to do with my college work. This is the meme I created: An image of a meme I created. Image Source; https://imgflip.com/i/3huak8 I made this meme on the website imgflip. I enjoyed making this meme and found it fun to make.

Unity Free Tutorials My Thursday did not go off to a good start because I was clearing my desktop and didn't realise my game folder was there and I ended up deleting it, so that means I have to start all over again but I will get the game fully done for the deadline. I know what assets I need and also I know how to create the items I did. This week I had to watch 2-4 Unity tutorials to help me with my game. I found 2 tutorials that will help me towards my final game. The first tutorial I looked at was how to make items collectable and how to add a scoreboard to my game. I need items to be collectable because without it my game would not have any function. I am hoping I will be able to add this part to my game as it is one of the most important parts of the game. The second part of this video shows me how to add a scoreboard to my game. I needed a tutorial on how to add this to my game because I need to have a scoreboard so the player knows how many of the 10 items they hav...

Game Stories This week for my reading task, I read two articles ' Into the Woods: A Practical Guide to the Hero's Journey' by Bob Bate and  ' What Every Game Developer Needs to Know about Story' by John Sunderland.   I enjoyed  reading this articles and found them very interesting. The first article I learned about the hero's in games. Mostly every game has a hero. My favourite hero in a video game would have to be Mario from the Super Mario Games.  This article helped me learn more about what goes into a hero in a video game.  These are the possible steps that a hero can go through on his/her journey: Establishing the hero's world The call to adventure Entering the mythological woods Trail of trials Encountering the evil one Gaining the hero's prize Returning that prize to the community Hero's play a huge part in games. The audience love when there is a certain hero in a game because they can get attached to the hero and really f...

Alpha This week I have worked on my game. I've decided to not have 10 different items that the player needs to collect as there are no assets for the items I want, so I have decided that I am just going to have 10 footballs that the player has to collect. I had a problem with my coding. I know exactly what coding I need for my game to work but when I was working on it for my game on my own laptop , every time that I would try put in the coding it would send me to dreamweaver, which I don't have bought on my laptop, so it would not allow me to code which is annoying but I will get the coding done in the mac labs in college. I am very confident that I will be able to get my character moving, the timer and the item counter working once I get myself onto the coding.This has annoyed me as I feel like there is not much difference from last week to now as I could not get the things done that I wanted to get done. I've added in screenshots of my game, I have added in where my...

Week 9 Progress For this blog I am writing about my progress over the last few weeks to now. 1. Overall, I am very happy with my progress so far. I did not think I would have as much points as I did if I am going to be honest but I roughly thought I would be near enough to it. I am just annoyed at myself for slacking for one of my weeks hitting a low number, but from them I knew I had to keep up on my work. I do have a good weekly routine. I plan my week out and manage to get my work done in time and done well. The class assignment that has been my favourite are the ones based around my game. I like them as I get to work and build my way towards my own game that I am making in Unity. I have only done one extra credit task one week, I am going to do more towards the end of the year as I want to get the best grade that I possibly can get.  2. There are no specific changes that I would make to my progress for the rest of the module but the only thing I am going to change...

Review week comments and feedback This week, I got to review my feedback blogs, I also read all the comments on my blogs from my classmates and lastly I looked back on my 'Introduction' blog which I wrote at the start of the module, it was just a quick introduction about myself and what I like/ don't like. 1. The feedback and comments that I have been getting on my blogs are very helpful and they are lovely to read. I like reading the comments my classmates leave on my blogs because I want to hear their opinion on my game or game ideas. I read all the comments as I feel like they can help me to see something I am doing good but more importantly something that feel could be useful to add in, for example, I was reading a comment on my game and the person suggested that I could think about adding in a ramp into my game to make it more challenging for the players and I really took that comment on board as I think I will add another obstacle to make it a bit more ch...

Week 9 Reading and Writing For this weeks reading and writing task, I had to look back at my readings and writings from week 1 to week 8 and see how my experience has been going.  I feel like the readings and writings have became more enjoyable as the weeks went on. 1. I feel like the readings and writings are working great for me. At the start of the weeks, I thought that I would not enjoy them to the extent that I do now. I especially thought that the readings were going to be boring and that I would not enjoy them but they have proved me wrong. My favourite reading was from week 4, it was called "what are game elements?'. I enjoyed this reading the most because I feel like I learnt and gained a lot from that reading and benefited towards me making my own game. Here is a link to the article I read for my week 4 reading: https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-3-dot-1-1-players . I feel like the readings overall have helped me towards my game as they give me...

First Playable This week for my project, I worked on my game and properly making the game. I found doing Unity tricky at the start and getting everything to move the way I wanted them too and the size I wanted them to be. I made the arena for my game but I might have to adjust the pitch to make it a perfect size.  I added my obstacles for my game which are cones which will stop the footballer on his path to collecting his items, I think I'm going to add more obstacles depending on how I feel towards the end of my game. I added a character but I want to change his clothes to make him look more like a footballer. I made the goals from scratch which was tough at the start because I found it hard to make them line up to make it look like a goal. I feel like next week I will have a lot more new bits into my game as I found it hard to make the items I wanted but I will look harder for assets that might work with them. I'm going to add the timer in when I get all my items in.  I ...

Unity Free Tutorials For this week's unity task, I had to pick 2-4 Unity tutorials that will help me towards my game that I'm creating. I found this weeks task helpful as I learnt a lot of new and important things from the tutorials I looked at. The tutorials I looked at were: - Unity 3D Tutorial Part 70: Character creation!!! : This tutorial was very helpful as it showed me how to create a character. I needed to look up a tutorial like this as the main part of my game in to have a character.  An image of a game character. Image Source: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Game-character/46006.html -  Unity Tutorial 2 - Creating objects in Unity: This tutorial showed me how to create items in Unity. This tutorial was also very helpful as it helped me to learn how to create items. I needed a tutorial like this because Items play a big part of my game as they are what my character needs to collect to complete the adventure. An example of objects ...

Game Fun For this week, I read over two articles. The three articles I read were: -Natural Funativity by Noah Falstein - Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs  by Richard Bartle I will summarise what I found important and learnt. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Natural Funativity by Noah Falstein: The first article I read was 'Natural Funativity' by Noah Falstein.   I enjoyed reading this article as I learnt the different three basic areas that make up the natural funativity theory. They are: Physical Fun: The same connection between us now and our evolutionary heritage is the survival instinct. Anything that threatens our survival grabs our attention. Games love to have survival as a big part of the game as it grabs the players attention and makes them more invested into the game. A good example of a game using survival as a huge part of their game is Mi...

Prototype This week I have thought more about my game. I've decided off many people suggestion it that I should include a time limit in my game to make it more fun and exciting for the player when their collecting the items. I felt like I was getting better with Unity when following the tutorials but when I try to start my game off by scratch, I felt like I was kind of lost about where I should even start. I spent a good while trying to get my character to look like how I want him too but I found it difficult. Over this week , I will like to have got everything sorted but I think I need a lot of time during this week to get all my items and character and setting sorted and ready to go. I have a picture of the items and obstacles I want to include into my game: An image of the items/character/obstacles I want to make on unity. I will work on my Unity extra hard this week to make sure I get everything I need done and I will add my progress into my blogs straight away.  ...

Unity Tutorial 06 This week I worked on my Unity skills again. This was my favourite week on Unity as I feel like my skills have developed very well over the last couple of weeks. At first, I didn't enjoy doing Unity and felt like it was to difficult and that I wouldn't be able to get good at it but I have felt that I have gotten better and am enjoying the progress that I am making for my final game. I had three different tutorials to watch and complete. I found the three videos helpful. I thought the first tutorial was the hardest to go through and complete. I thought it was the most difficult because there was a lot of things that I had to keep up on and sometimes I would find myself getting stuck or accidentally skipping a bit. It took me a good while to get through but I got there in the end. The second and third tutorials were easier but they weren't too easy to complete. I enjoyed learning and completing the tutorial on the environment as I feel like I can use thi...

Game Decisions For this weeks reading task, I read an article called ' Social Design Practices for Human-Scale Online Games' by Daniel Cook.  - What we can borrow from social psychology :  Social game design operates within the physical and mental constraints of the human animal , so it pays to understand these constraints and build them into our designs. -An overview of friendship formation:  Friendship formation requires 4 key ingredients:  1.Proximity: Being close to someone will encourage many interactions.  2.Similarity: Having something in common with someone will make it more likely that they will become friends 3.Reciprocity: Players must engage with each other in order to share social norms. 4.Disclosure: At high level of friendships, there must be safety and trust between them. You can take any two players, put them together in matches for hundreds of hours, and if the above criteria are not met, they are unlikely to bec...