Extra Credit: Update and Fixed Update

For this week’s extra credit task, I decided to choose the tutorial about update and fixed update.

I chose this tutorial because these were both familiar items that I had always come across when completing my unity tutorials and I wanted to further and recap my knowledge on them.

Some main points I was able to take away from the tutorial were:

For void update: almost anything that needs to be changed or adjusted regular happens in that section and it is not called on a regular timeline, therefore the timeline between the calls is not the same.

For fixed update: it is a called on a regular timeline and will have the same timeline between calls.

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Growth Mindset- : Exploring the Random Growth Mindset Cats

I chose the cate meme randomiser for my extra credit task this week. below are the three images/memes that I enjoyed the most and a little description about why I choose them

I  like the message given in this image, I like the idea that new experiences are required to open up the mind and how once the mind is constantly exposed to new experiences that it can only develop and grow from then onwards.

I like the message provided about success in this image. the idea that it is a process meaning it requires time and work. The message that I was able to take away form this is that success is not just a singular event but it is a continuous process.

This image i think speaks for itself, the concept of idea generation is exiting to me, not only for academic related school ideas, but for all aspects of life, such as business, work and cooking ! etc 

Coding Task- IF statements

For this extra credit coding task, I learnt about “IF Statements”

These statements are needed for the code to make a decision based on a condition.

There is also another statement called the “IF- Else” statement, meaning that it will be conditional, ie below a specific limit.

I learnt that these stamen are useful for making decision in the code and deciding what you want the code to do based on a condition.

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Unity Tutorial 07

This week unity tutorial involved adding some audio to the final game and distributing the final game. The last few weeks I have fell behind on the unity tutorials, so the past few weeks I have been using to get myself up to speed with the content that I missed.

This week in unity the two things I learnt were as follows:

I learnt how to handle 2D sounds in the game, this involved adding some background music to continuously play whilst the player is playing the game, the addition of a One-shot sound which plays when the player specifically completes a task, such as collecting health icons, or dying.

I was also able to learn game distribution for the final game output, I learnt that it is important to optimise the files for distribution so that they are not too large when it come to game output, this can be completed in the unity hub. At present my game is not ready for distribution as it still has some bug fixes and issue with the code. But over the coming weeks I will be going back over the tutorials to see any missed steps, implement these changes and hopefully have a full-fledged running game.

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Reading 08- Introduction & Conclusion

 

This week’s reading task involved further developing the book chapter that I had been working on over the past coming weeks.  I now have a fully-fledged book chapter created, and for this week I was tasked with creating a strong introduction and conclusion for the book chapter.

Using the resource videos provided on creating an introduction and conclusion, I was able to draw some useful points form them and implement them into my book chapter

Some notes I took away and implemented into my conclusion where to:

Reinstate main points in an interesting way

Remind reader of why they are there

What is important/interesting about the points that are made

What can readers take away from this essay that is useful

 

Some more points I took away and was able to implement into my own chapter from the introduction section of the resource video were to:

Prepare the reader for topic

Provide an introduction starter such as an attention grabber – any statement that makes the reader want to read more or a statistic relating to the text.

 

So far I am happy with the progress that I am making on my book chapter, I can definitely say that my research and writing skills have improved as a result of the weekly tasks that have been carried out prior to writing this chapter. I am looking forward to working through the remainder of these reading tasks, completing my final chapter and then implementing these research skills onto future research topics throughout this course

My updated book chapter can be found here!

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Reading 07-Peer Review

 

For This week’s reading task, I was assigned to peer review work produced by two of my other classmates.  The work assigned to review is for the Game book we are creating as a class. Each class member is assigned a subtopic within a chapter and is tasked with writing about that subtopic based on the research collected over the past few weeks

The class was assigned triads for commenting, the two triads I was assigned to comment on were as follows:

What is a game? /Brief History of Games by Jurate

Why people Play Games- by Christopher

 

To see my comments on my team members work you can click here.

 

The comments I received from my classmates were quite useful, it was mentioned that they liked the style of the academic writing and found it to be appropriate for the chapter being discussed. They also mentioned the adequate use of citations throughout the text. One piece of constructive criticism that I was able to gain from my peers was my sentence structure. Some of the sentences were too long and difficult to read. Moving forward I plan to implement these changes to my chapter to allow for an easier reading experience.

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Reflective Blog Post-The Game Jam

Introduction

I participated in the University Game Jam last week.  A game jam involves students of different backgrounds coming together to form a team and create a game, the game jam was a fun contest with prizes awarded for the top games created. The jam was structured as follows; I was assigned to a multi-disciplinary team where we had about the whole weekend (72 hours) to produce a game. We were tasked with creating a language learning educational game, and it was a language of our choice or based on the expertise we had within the group. What was great about participating in the game jam was that you did not need to have any coding or advanced coding game skills as there are multiple game formats that can be created.

 

Team

Upon signing up for the game jam I was assigned to the team called Kangaroo, which consisted of four students including myself. 2 of the students were studying the international business and languages course and myself and another student in the Creative Digital Media Course. Once we were assigned our teams, we virtually introduced ourselves to one another and began discussing our background and our skills. Once we established the skills that we would like to contribute to the team, we assigned roles and began the brainstorming and planning stages. My role was the game production and export, whilst other students’ roles where, game design and graphics, language structure and language scripting for the game.

Organisation and Planning

Once we had our team’s name and team roles decided and assigned, we began the organisation and planning of the game. Our first group task that was assigned to us, in order to break the ice and get to know each other more was a logo creation task. We were tasked with creating a logo that represents our team and our team’s ethos, we were given about 20 mins to create this logo in our teams and then present them into the main chat. Our team did a quick brainstorm on names for the logo, after quick deliberation we had decided on the abbreviation CPL which stands for Creative language providers. I then used adobe logo creator and typed in some keywords suggested by the other team members, such as avatar and speech bubble, we then decided on colours and we were then able to cultivate the logo which can be seen below.

source: team logo created by adobe logo maker

After the presentation of the logo, we were left to our own devices to create the game. Firstly, we discussed our educational background with one another, we also discussed our skills and the skills that we are confident in regarding game creation. Other members of the team had a vast knowledge of the Spanish language in reading, speaking, and writing, so it was quickly affirmed that we would be creating a Spanish language learning game.

Whilst continuing the group call, we began discussing popular language learning games that we could reference to, Duolingo and Babbel were the top two language games that we could think of, however considering the complexity of these game designs, we decided to opt for a simpler route. After numerous discussions and a presentation from one of the game jam participants from last year, we opted for creating a memory matching card-board game. Once established the game type and format was decided, we assigned game roles, planned to meet virtually later in the day and then individually went about creating our individual parts for the game

 

Process/Production

I was responsible for creating the final game in our group. My responsibility involved collecting all the information and graphics provided by other team members and putting them into a game. As we decided on a board game, the final game output would not have been interactive. I decided to research online on how to create an interactive board game. I came across this video below. This method of using PowerPoint to create a game was something I had not seen before, and since my skills using unity and C# were not that strong , this was the best route that I could have taken for the group. The process of creating the PowerPoint game started off smoothly, I was able to quickly assemble the game from the graphics created by my fellow classmate, and I was also able to smoothly include the Spanish learning phrases provided by the language students.

              

 

Lessons Learned

I was very happy to participate in the college game jam and found it quite beneficial not only for college practice, but also for future workplace practices. The main takeaways that I got from this weekend’s game jam was the importance of teamwork and communication within a team. I believe our team worked very well with each other during the game jam. There was adequate communication and continuous updates and efforts from each team member all the way up until the final game jam submission. I believe we all communicated well, and we all took time to learn from and listen to each other’s points

An aspect of the game jam that I thoroughly enjoyed was the time limit factor, the pressure put on us to create a final output in 72 hours, this was equal parts enjoyable and stressful as we worked closer towards the deadline. I found it challenging creating the actual game format, I think this is due to the fact that I was placed in a group where the members where not confident in their gaming skills, so I took it upon myself to create the game. Something else I learnt from working as a part of a team in this game jam is learning to take a step back. Oftentimes I like to assign myself the role of the team leader and split the roles and structure of the team amongst myself and other team members, this time I was able to take a step back and allow the other team members to lead and learn to follow in a supportive way.

source: game world map created in adobe illustrator

source: Snippet from memory game-beach themed level

 

Reading 06- Rough Chapter

 

This week’s reading task involved using the themes I had created and summarised and the annotated bibliography to create rough paragraphs of my assigned chapter.

 

So far, I must say that I found this whole process and research method very beneficial, the steps involved, from the early reading stages of doing research, to collecting a list of research materials, to building a review matrix and an annotated bibliography to now.

 

At first, I found it difficult to understand why I was using this detailed research method, but it has all become clear now. I was able to write my paragraphs for my final chapter with ease and flow, I do not believe that I would have been able to write this paragraph if I did not have the well-rounded knowledge from the previous research task that I had completed prior. I’m looking forward to applying this research method to all major and future college projects as I believe that there is a significant difference in not only the quality of research papers but also the quality of the writing as I had a well-rounded knowledge on the research topic.

 

My assigned chapter is called The psychology of why people are playing games/gamer psychology and it can be found here

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Reading 05- Thematic Process

This weeks task was slightly difficult to grasp at first, but after watching the assigned video several times I was finally able to grasp the task needed to be carried out.

In my own words simplified, the task for this week involved taking the annotated bibliographies that have been completed from the weeks prior and using these bibliographies to create a thematic analysis.

From my understanding after watching the reference video, a thematic analysis is used to identify key themes from your research text, define it and use it to begin writing or composing your research question.

 From my annotated bibliography I was able to draw 5 main themes and use them in the thematic analysis.

 

The themes can be listed as follows:

 

The positive psychological effects of gaming

The negative psychological effects of gaming

Internet Gaming Disorder

Gaming Addiction

Why are individuals continuing to play games?

 

This reading task proved quite useful for this week as I am now aware of how I can begin writing my book chapter and how I would like to structure it. It was also useful as it allowed me to identify some limitations in my research. I found that the theme titled “ Gaming Addiction” had quite limited information on it, so moving forward I will have to decide if it is something that I will want to include in my research chapter or something I will leave out. Other than that I feel confident in my findings and I am looking forward to producing a piece from my collated list of resources.

My annotated bibliography can be found here 

my thematic analysis can be found here 

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