Game Stories

 

This week I learnt about game stories. This was an interesting read because I was able to learn not only about the importance of storytelling within games, but also the structures that some of them may follow.

I was able to gain some knowledge on what a story is and how they can be narrative focused, or character focused. Both of these affect the way in which the player interacts and engages with the gameplay.

I learnt about the three main frameworks that game designers refer to when it comes to implementing storytelling within games.  

This can be listed as follows:

•       The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell

This puts emphasis on myths and heroes within mythology. This framework establishes a common structure found between mythological stories

•    Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, by Robert McKee

This framework discusses how storytelling is not about formulas, it is about forms. And each follows a similar form.

•         Poetics, by Aristotle

This framework is not about poetry as the name would suggest, it Is actually about tragedy and the inclusion of tragedies within storylines. It often represents stories that replicate real life, rather than supernatural, mystical or romantic endings #

 

I found these readings quite interesting and beneficial. It  is good to have a academic knowledge of how stories are told and the different framework bodies used by game designers.

 

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Sources 

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Tutorial 10

 

This week’s unity tutorial I was able to learn many new game design and coding techniques that I can and will use to apply to my final game. Some of the new elements learn can be listed as follows:

I learnt about using 2D and 3D view.

I learnt how to create a game manager object instead of a spawn manager which would have been typically used. This allows us to control the state of the game as more features are being added to it.

I learnt about mouse events this entailed how to make an object destroy itself when clicked. 

I leant about the platform Text mesh pro and canvas. These platforms allowed for the me to add in some UI elements to the game improving the experience for the player such as a score count ad player score board.

I learned how to create and manage game states to make it a smoother game experience for the player. I was able to do this by providing player feedback using the game over and reset button.

I learned how to use buttons in the game and make them active by giving them a command in the code, I was able to use the UI library used to help interact with buttons in scene.

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Beginner Scripting : Delta Time

 

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

I chose this tutorial because the term delta time was a familiar statement that I had always come across when completing my unity tutorials and I wanted to further and recap my knowledge on it.

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

The term Delta time, means the time between each update or fixed update call

Time between frames is not constant therefore they need to be modified by using delta time

It makes the movement of objects more smooth and takes away that glitching effect that would occur if it wasn’t implemented.

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