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Games Development: Exercises

25/9/2024 - //2024 / Week 1 - Week 
Janice Marie Eng Chia Hui /0361521
Games Development/Bachelor of Design in Creative Media / Taylor's University 
Games Development: Exercises

Table of Contents:

Instructions


Lectures

Week 1

    Week 2



    This week we learnt about some ideation methods. These methods include:
    1. The SCAMPER method:
      • Substitute
      • Combine
      • Adapt
      • Modify
      • Put to another use
      • Eliminate
      • Reverse
    2. The 3(i):
      • Incorporate/Include
      • Improve
      • Inverse/Invert
    Figure 1.1 Scamper Methode Quick Summary

    After informing us about these 2 methods, we were asked to access 2 websites and play a few games there. Website link:

    I played a few games there, including Prince of Persia and Yoshi Cookie. I had a small issue where I did not know the keyboard controls so was just spamming all possible buttons till something happened lmao.

    Task

    Week 1

    To-Do List:
    • Access this website and play some of the games made by students. Ensure that the games are made with Unity games.
    • Pick one or more of the games there, and perform some critical reviews on those games
    • Jot down all the reviews in your blog.

    Figure 2.1 Start Screen of 'The Cry From the Classroom' 

    The Cry From the Classroom seems to be a horror adventure game. To advance the story, players have to interact with objects around them. The story involves a schoolgirl haunting her school and advancing the game tells us why she's haunting the school. 

    Game Design
    • Art and design: The art in the game perfectly conveys the horror aspect of the game. The creepy and foreboding music also helps make the gameplay more engaging. Minor detail but some of the font used in the game made it very hard to read the text and understand the story.
    • Players Experience: Players are provided with explanations on how they can interact with the world as well as overcome challenges making it easy to learn how to play the game. Additionally, I personally like how interactable objects are highlighted or made to look different from the background, allowing players to easily identify their next objective. Each enemy also had their own sound effect or noises that they made, and hitting them also produced a cutting sound, letting me know if I actually dealt damage to them or not.
    • Storyline: The storyline seems to be heavily referenced from the game Detention. But I still enjoyed how the setting of the plot was changed to Malaysia. 
    Figure 2.2 Unreadable text, tutorials seen in-game and interactable objects in-game 

    Gameplay
    • Challenge: The game includes 2 different types of enemies, one shoots projectiles but has lesser HP while the the other has more HP but doesn't shoot anything. These enemies must be killed to advance. There was a big boss fight at the end.
    • Strategy: To kill the enemies, the player must collect talismans and fire them at the enemies. The enemies walk in a fixed path so once you know where they stop you can easily kill them from afar. Not much strategising is needed. 
    • Chance: In this game, touching the enemies is instant death and you get respawned at the last checkpoint. To help with survivability, the game gives out talismans at each stage. The talismans have limited usage, so players can't spam the shoot button.
    Figure 2.3 Dying in the big boss fight (left) dying to one of the bosses (right)

    Conclusions:
    Figure 2.4 Ending Screen Ta-Da

     The Good:
    • Sound design, assets and art style all fit the horror theme, making it an immersive experience.
    • A tutorial was provided, and it was easy to learn the controls.
    • Interactable objects are obvious. 
    • No bugs or glitches in the game, and the game ran very smoothly.
    • Enemies are at a good level of difficulty FOR ME (I am a horrible gamer lol)
    The not-so-great
    • Gameplay: The gameplay is quite static. I think that adding in some puzzles or even getting the player to find a key to unlock a door would help make the gameplay less static. 
    • Killing enemies: The primary method for defeating enemies and the boss in this game is by firing talismans. At the beginning of each stage, the player is provided with 10 talismans. Once all 10 are used, the player is unable to fire any more. If the player runs out of talismans without defeating the enemy, the only way to continue is by killing themselves and respawning, which also restores the 10 talismans. I find this mechanic frustrating, as I don’t like the idea of having to respawn just to get more talismans. A more convenient design might involve adjusting the firing mechanic. For example, the firing speed of the talismans could start off extremely slow and gradually increase as the stage progresses, allowing for a more fluid gameplay experience.

    Week 2

    This week we were asked to come up with a game idea using the SCAMPER of the 3(i) method. We were put into groups, my group included:
    1. Alyssa
    2. Warith Moss (0362270)
    3. Aiman Hazim (0361274)
    4. Aaditya Prasade (0344195)
    5. Gao Weidong(0360058)
    6. Chooi Cheng Yue (0355870)
    7. Janice Marie Eng Chia Hui (0361521)
    We decided to use Among Us as the game reference and came up with the game Among Them. The plot of the story was that the alien decided to research the human race, but Earth is currently in a post-apocalyptic world and the humans are trying to kill each other. So the player must try and help by upgrading the facilities to help the humans get along.  

    Below is our presentation slide for the exercise:
    among them by Janice Eng

    Week 3
    Notes:
    • Start function(in the code) starts as soon as we start the game
    • Update function updates while we are playing the game.
    • Vector3 in code represents the X, Y and Z axis
    • Forward is one
    • Void late Updates, updates slightly slower. 

    Challenge 1
    I followed this YouTube video on how to make things work. Link



    Week 4

    Challenge 2

    Week 5

    What we learned:
    • How to make a scrolling game
    • Adding music and sound effects
    • Declaration must be put right after the first curly bracket
    • 'Add force' makes it jump
    • Freeze the rotations in the constraints section
    • Change the gravity in the player setting to make it constant throughout the scenes
    • Public variable to make it changeable in the inspector
    • Instantiate make an object spawn at a particular location
    • Tag helps to get the name of the obstacle, if your obstacle has different names you can tag it and retrieve that tag when u code.
    • ! mark means 'it's not'
    I went home and added the sfx based on the document.

    The outcome of week 5


    Challange 3
    I had a problem where the balloon wouldn't stay in the game bounds. I tried asking ai for help but the balloon got stuck in the end. So I gave up lol.

    Week 7

    This week we learned how to make a veryyy simple movement platform game. Below is the outcome. This activity was to familarise us with the scripts.




    Reflection

    To be completely honest with you, the code makes no sense to me lmao.

    Sneak Out to Snack



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