Learning challenge: Health and Happiness: Principle's for Success

This week I was tasked with reading an article based on the theme of health and happiness.

My chosen article was from Entrepreneur Europe’s magazine.

The article is titled “The 9 Principles That People Who Feel Successful Say They Live By”

One thing that this article had confirmed for me, something that I already knew was that the people who are successful are hardworking and often creating things, such as concepts, business ideas, art and so much more.

This was an interesting read as I was able to learn about the necessary steps for success, something which I had not considered before was the ability to be “resilient” which is necessary for overcoming obstacles and bouncing back from setback positively, something that will occur on the road to success

 One thing that I am going to take away from this article is the term “Pursue Meaning”, the article recommended different methods of pursuing meaning such as volunteering, or joining a humanitarian group, for me to pursue meaning in my career it would look something like taking up an internship or an unpaid role in order to gain first-hand experience in my desired sector.

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Analysis of Research

Continuing from last week, this week’s reading task involved building upon the already established list of articles collected. I now have several solid articles relating to my chapter topic of the “Psychology of why people are playing games”

 This week my focus was to work more on understanding specific psychological terms relating to why people are playing games, delved more into the topics underlined below:

Direct causes of gaming on psychological wellbeing

 Pathological factors involved in gaming

     What is internet gaming disorder?

 Why do individuals continue to play games?

 Gaming addiction

At this stage in my research the quality and number of articles that I am sourcing are beginning to come more limited, the more defined my chapter topic is becoming by researching articles, the less material there is out there to support the claims.

I used the three-pass method and my review matrix to sort and analyse each paper to assess its validity.  So far, I am finding this method of research and reviewing articles quite useful I have been able to critically assess each article in detail and can now decide which articles that I will want to use and the exact direction I want to take when it comes to writing my chapter.

 

My Review Matrix can be found Here

 

My Annotated Bibliography can be Found Here

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Beginner Scripting: Scripts as Behaviour Components

 

By attaching the script to the object, you can add a value to a specific object and decide how that value will affect that object, this value may be speed, colour, or movement. I have been using scripts in unity for a while now, and I am just beginning to learn that they are behavioural components and are essential for game development. This was a useful video tutorial providing a good refresher of the scripts.

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Unity Tutorial 03

For this week’s unity tutorial, I continued working on my chosen path, which was the 2D game option.  Like last week I was able to build upon my unity skills from the week prior whilst learning new unity skills. Something new that I was able to learn this week was the health stat option, I learnt how to give Ruby ( the game sprite) a health status and also provide prefabs for her to collect to revive health, at first I was struggling with the health status script as I kept on making mistakes and creating errors or bugs in the game, I went over this tutorial a few times and was finally able to fix the errors and work through the rest of the tutorials.

The second part of this tutorial allowed me to add in a game object that could damage my game character, by adding this conflict or obstacle to the game it makes it more realistic. I found this too quite useful and it is something that I will definitely implement toward the end of term when it comes to creating my own game.

So far, I am enjoying these unity tutorials, but I still find myself struggling to understand a lot of the concepts behind why I am doing what I am doing, especially with the coding tasks, I think doing some further reading and watching some video tutorials down the line is something that might be beneficial for me.

source: screenshot from Unity Hub

Meme Generator Tech Tip

Great Tech Tip task learnt this week! I learnt how to make my own memes! this is great, The platform I used can be found here! I will definitely be using this down the line for my Twitter. 

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Tech Tip: Google Map

I enjoy completing these Tech tasks each week as it allows to to learn valuable digital technology skills! 

Here I have just leant how to embed a google Map within blog post. I chose the State of New York because I plan on living there one day myself in the future.

The link to try out his tutorial can be found here!

  

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Doing Research Work

 

This week’s reading involved collating a list of research topics and using different methods to evaluate the reading and asses the suitability if the text.

One thing I learnt from this week’s reading is the importance of active reading over passive reading.  In previous research assignments I would often collate my sources in a passive method by just accepting the text and sources that were found, I had never really taken the time to analyse the work and to question the validity of the text or the paper.

 

For the research portion of this week’s reading task, I managed to collect several credible sources relating to my topic of “Gamer Psychology”. I included each article found relating in my topic in a review matrix, at first, I found the layout of the review matrix to be a bit confusing, but after a couple of read- through’s I was able to tailor it to my advantage and structure it in a way that was simple for me to use. Whist filling out my review matrix I used the three-pass reading method. Something I like about using this method for the research papers is the thoroughness of the method, and how each step of this method is a driving force for whether the next step will be completed.

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Sample Review Matrix attached here for reference.

Links to the readings I have completed

Understanding Gamer Psychology: Why Do People Play Games?

Understanding serious gaming: A psychological perspective

The Association Between Video Gaming and Psychological Functioning 

Unity Tutorial 02- Decorating the Game World, Game World Interactions

This week’s unity tutorial involved building on the 2D game that I started last week.

The tutorial had two parts, part one involved decorating the game world and part two involved game world interactions.

I learnt quite a lot of useful skills from this week’s Unity. One skill that I was able to practice more on was the design and creative aspects of game design, being able to practice this especially by using tile maps and positioning tools within unity was quite useful, it also useful as it allows me to brainstorm the type and style of game world that I would want to create for my final game project.

The second part of the tutorial involving world interactions was a good refresher from the skills learnt from last term. This was my favourite part of the tutorial; I enjoy learning about making the game world realistic in unity especially where the physics element is involved. I believe that this small sector is something that I now have a good knowledge in and I can definitely say that I am becoming more confident in this section.

One thing that I found difficult and that I am continuing to find difficult is the scripting aspect of unity, I am able to work through them and follow the tutorials, but I still lack much understanding and would find it difficult to compile one on my own. However, I am looking forward to learning more throughout this tutorial and eventually getting to that stage and skillset.

Source: screenshot from Unity Hub

Unity Tutorial 01

 

The first unity task of this semester involved downloading unity assets and preparing the set up for a new 2D game.

This Tutorial was useful as it allowed me to go back over re-learn unity skills and be able to reapply them. Something that I found difficult whilst completing this tutorial was the initial setup of the 2D game, I found it quite difficult to obtain the assets and to download the current 2D file to setup the game, this was due to an old unity version, once I was able to update the unity hub, these issues then became resolved.

One thing I am liking about the Unity Tutorials this term round is the detailed step-by-step Instructions for this tutorial, I am finding it very useful to learn more in depth information about using C# scripts and each function, from moving horizontal and so on. I'm also enjoying the creative aspect of unity, this involves creating game worlds and structuring the game using unity assets.

 

Something that I am looking forward is completing the 2D game tutorial, improving my unity skills and seeing the final game output, I’m also looking forward to creating my own game with my newly learnt and more refined unity skills.

Source: screenshot from unity work hub

Tech Tip: Blogger Template

This week Tech task involved browsing through several blog templates and choosing an appropriate one to upgrade to.

After looking through the several templates that where available on the blogger site, I eventually decided to choose the dark theme, which is currently applied right now.

I believe that this theme is more suited to this module as the dark theme is synonymous with a lot of games and gaming styles. The layout of this blog is larger, and it provides a full and more clear sidebar menu of previous blog posts which can now be easily referenced as opposed to the last design. I also like how the dark colours provide a sleeker look to the blog.

Old Blog Design