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Game Design Document – Leah Byrne –B00107444 ‘Escape Route’ §   Story The name of the game is ‘Escape Route’, about a character who found himself inside a maze structure. The character races against time to find their way out, this can take multiple tries. The backstory of the game is around the idea of a adventurer who has gotten lost along their way and has found their way to this maze and it is another task in their journey, the users job is to help the character find their way out and continue their travels. §   Character The user will have one or two characters to chose from in the loading screen, a man and a woman. The user will always see the gameplay through a first-person view looking directly on front of them, at all times. The characters will ideally be designed to look like adventurers on a journey to collect the gem at the centre of the maze. The user will hopefully find a liking towards a certain character and generate a favourite, this will improve...

Tutorial one is about UI elements and how to create a dynamic curser. Making and creating a more impressive or attractive looking curser when the user is playing the game pointing the curser at other objects. Using the code to alter the casing is something that is difficult to get the hang of and I find it difficult at times, as coding isn’t my strong point but it is interesting to alter the gameplay with code. I learned how to change the curser when hovering over an object, such as the gem, coding it so that the user sees a message appear on screen, this gives the game a very in chune effect with the user as it is communicating the gameplay. The second tutorial tackles animation, creating a weapon with animation within Unity. Downloading the axe asset and basically dragging and dropping it into our game, which is very simple. Then altering the dimensions along with the position in relation to our first person view to create a more realistic look. I found this quite easy to achiev...

This blog post is about my vision statement for my game idea. the name my game will be ‘Escape Route’. A maze structured puzzle game designed to get the user to collect gems and make his/her way out of the maze as fast as possible. The game size will be small with a few different routes to take, various gems could increase the runners speed, add more time to the clock or unlock different routes in the maze. The main areas I’m going to focus on are Game Genre, Gameplay and Resources. Game Genre The genre of this game is a puzzle/adventure style game, with gems to collect and various possible outcomes I aim to create a simple yet addictive game. Other games similar to this would be Temple Run or Mario Bros or even simple maze games such as Labyrinth. Game genre is important as it helps you as a developer to cater towards a certain target audience, be able to get a better idea of what they enjoy as users and the different aspects they enjoy within a game that can help you improv...

This week in Unity we explored the use of audio within a game. How important audio is to enhancing a game and the difference it can make to certain effects or movements within the game. The first tutorial talks about using audio clips with Unity and how to make it seemlessly flow with the visual aid. Importing audio into Unity is quite simple and creating folders to help organise them is a great way to manage your inputs. I learned about the different coding used on Unity for audio and how case-sensitive it can be. I also learned about using water and how to create bodies of water within Unity. I found this tricky at times as building the terrain to look realistic can be tricky! The second tutorial talked about UI's and how to customise a curser in the game, if thats something you need to use. Overall this Unity tutorial was challenging to get the hang off but exciting to see the results! Building Terrain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW5SgPO2YP0

This weeks reading was all about the MDA framework in gaming, the first video was an informative video on the framework and how it works as a whole. MDA itself stands for, Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics. Mechanics is the 'rules' of the game, how it works and the ins and outs of the games story line or end goal. Dynamics involves the play of the game, how the story line progresses and how the rules play it when in action. Aesthetics is all about the player experience, from layout and design to user friendliness, it is a very important aspect of game development. The 8 aspects of a game to make it fun include: 1. Sensation: how a game makes you feel and act when playing. 2. Fantasy: the story line. 3. Narrative: the story of a game and how it progresses. 4. Challenge: the competition in a game. 5. Fellowship: the social aspect of a game . 6. Discovery: finding new land/territory in a game. 7. Expression: the way in which a user reacts to a game. 8. Submission: the ga...

This week I read up on a few articles regarding game design and development. The first article I read was http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/196691/the_ouya_experience_what_game_.php , in this article they discuss the gaming platform Ouya and what various game developers think of it. it was interesting to read what the game developer thought about bringing their game to Ouya, how it would benefit them and/or hinder their success. Many of the developers go on to tell us how Ouya backed their games and without the help and support of their team, their games may not of been possible! It is interesting to read about these smaller game developers and how a platform like Ouya helped them bring their dreams to light and kickstart their careers. Another article I read was http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/195806/chasing_the_whale_examining_the_.php , in this article I read about Chris, in his mid 20s, slowly becoming obsessed with the game Team Fortress 2. After stumbling up...

Article 1: ‘Silence the Critical voices in your Head’ The voices in your head often float around and around until you feel like you’re going to explode. Telling you over and over again that you’re not good enough or that you’re a failure in everything you do, it happens to us all. Yet, it stops us all from achieving our goals! How do we stop this? For me personally, the self-doubt and constant fear of being a failure is something I’m familiar with, I deal with it in my college assignments all the time, wondering if it’s good enough or if I’ll be happy with the result. It can be easier to find a positive, but to listen to that positive is another issue. This article talks about this issue and how to try over come it, it’s hard work but it will get you to the place you want to be. Silencing these voices isn’t an easy task, but with time, hard work and some listening, anything is possible! Listen to your Thoughts https://medium.com/@JonathanZWhite/listen-to-your-thoughts-4a9d75...

Game idea 1: Maze For this game idea, I drew on inspiration from ‘Where’s Wally’, ‘Roll the Ball’ and many others. The idea of getting from one place to another through a series of events is a challenge everyone enjoys. It sets a task and the user wants to complete it before anyone else does as a sense of accomplishment. It would be a simple enough game design and layout with a easy concept, as I feel those games do well with audiences, people enjoy a simple yet addictive game! Which way is out?? https://www.123rf.com/photo_90454303_stock-illustration-maze-game-scheme-square-labyrinth-sample-illustration-.html Game idea 2: Adventure Puzzle  This game will be more of a challenge than the first one, creating more of an environment or world for the viewer to enjoy. The aim of the game would be simple, to collect tokens or ‘treasure’ to reach the end goal. The inspiration of this game relates back to one of my first blog posts about my favourite game, Temple Run. With a...

This week I used Unity for the first time ever. It was a lot to handle. The program itself has a certain layout to it that I’ve yet to get fully used to and get the hang of. There is a lot of little features and tools to use when creating a game and it is a matter of getting used to it and figuring out all of these. I first set up Unity and got an initial project up and running. I watched the tutorial videos step by step to ensure I knew what each feature was, to the best of my ability. The tutorial was very helpful as it explained the features involved such as the console or animation tabs and that the game can be changed to operate on any device and how to do so. Creating shapes and learning about the x,y,z axis and how to control the locations of the objects in the scenes. unity gaming https://www.udemy.com/unity-master-video-game-development-the-complete-course/ The thing I’m most excited about it learning to produce and design a game. Getting used to how the progra...