Multimedia Development

I have just completed the reading task for this week on initial design. The reading this week focused on initial design and creating mock-ups for games from board games to video games and everything in between. The main article  we read called Design Considerations by Greg Aleknevicus (the creator of Black Vienna Online ) goes in depth about what to consider when creating a board game, which is easily transferable to other mediums for games also. From the beginning I agree with Greg straight away on something that I loved as a child - physical presentation. Getting a new video game as a child I always loved looking at the front and back covers for the art and information, opening the box to see what art is on the disc, flicking through the manual and getting that new book smell  as well as looking at other things like physical copies of the in-game world map. Physical presentation was such a great selling point to me as a consumer as a child with video games that it i...

In this Unity tutorial we learned how to utilise the programming language C# in our games to rotate the arms on a clock that we've made in the Unity Editor. The tutorial was on this page  and it was relatively easy to read through and follow. I started from the start in building the clock face out of a 3D Object in game. In this case I used a cylinder. I flattened the cylinder to create a face and moved on to making the hour indicators . For this I had to use a cube 3D Object, and make it long and narrow. I then learned how to use the hierarchy system in the Unity editor to make multiples of the hour indicator.  Each time I duplicated one I had to increase it's y  rotation by 30 degrees to move it along the clock face's axis. These indicators were then taken from their 'parents' in the hierarchy system and placed as 'children' under the clock object. Moving on I created the arms next, making each of them a parent of their own for the hour, minute and s...

Having completed near an hour of reading I have decided to document my findings on Games MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics & Aesthetics). I started with watching the slide show video which summarised a lot of what LeBlanc, Hunicke and Zabek explored in their publishing of ' MDA Framework '. Mechanics, Dynamics & Aesthetics are defined as the following: 1. Mechanics - describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms. 2. Dynamics - describes the run-time behaviour of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each others outputs over time. 3. Aesthetics - describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system. The slideshow and article continue to go into detail on each. My understanding of each has improved greatly thanks to it. I understand Mechanics now as being ammunition or spawn points in games, Dynamics as being how a situation develops because of your in-game choi...

Little update: I've added my Twitter feed to my side bar! Click on the burger bar/navigation bar in the top right hand corner of my blog to view it!

Little update: I've added my Twitter feed to my side bar! Click on the burger bar/navigation bar in the top right hand corner of my blog to view it!

A link to my first list . I created the CDM list as it is most relevant to me and what I am doing. I added the CDM Twitter and the ITBSU Twitter as they tie in to my college work. I had no previous experience with lists on Twitter but it is quite handy to get all the tweets from a relevant industry and relevant accounts in one place. And I agree with what Shaun said in his blog post about being time-efficient online: "so much to keep up with, and so little time!"

I only follow a few accounts on my new Twitter  as I have only recently set it up. I did have an account that was several years old where I was following hundreds of people and I felt I needed a fresh start which is why I started anew! On my new account I mostly follow my fellow classmates, but I also follow accounts like UDHEIT because we learned a lot to do with Universal Design in first year, Lovin Dublin as they regularly tweet about restaraunts and events in Dublin and our very own CDM Twitter account to keep up to date with current news relative to us and our field of study!