Elizabeth Hegarty

Hey Guys, Welcome back to my blog, well we are all stuck in isolation so I guess even with everything going on we have no excuse not to get on with writing this book. I wont lie, I am struggling to put this information I have found into sentences that actually make sense!  I have gone back to square one (since I have time now) and I have writing out again exactly what I need to create paragraphs with important information. I am still writing my paragraphs (I know i'm a week behind) but I will get there and I am confident that in myself to write a good chapter of this book.  I have even gone back to looking at more articles/books to gather more information. I'm also trying to learn more about referencing as it is not my strong point. By looking at my other classmates chapters in this book and how they refence has given me an idea of how to do it but I will check again with Shaun on Thursday when we have our online lecture! Anyway thats enough from me - enjo...

Hi Guys, Welcome back to my blog, for today I will be talking about a new set of unity tutorials which are extremely long!! I really did enjoy these tutorials as it was a new set of them so more to learn, I know I keep saying this but this semesters unity is so much better then last semester I really really like them! Anyway lets talk about unity! I found these sets of tutorials very easy which is a good thing as it means I am getting the hang of things!  We started by adding a background and picking our character, we then began to add some code for the player to control the character.  (screenshot of my code) (Screenshot of character jumping)  We then added an obstacle for the character to jump over. I found by following the tutorials the code is getting easier. Overall I am really happy with my progress on unity! Anyway until next week -Elizabeth

Hey guys, Welcome back to my blog, today I will be talking more about writing my paragraphs.  From looking at my matrix writing my paragraphs is becoming so much easier. I find already having the chapters I need in one place within my folders is a huge help.  I am writing all my paragraphs into a word doc at the moment and then I will just copy and paste it all onto the google document that Shaun has in place for us. As me and Lauren are working on the same chapter we have been going through all our documents and articles we have found making sure we do not have the information in each topic heading. (screenshot of google docs as I start putting in all my paragraphs) Anyway that's it for this week! -Elizabeth

Hey guys, For the readings this week I am starting to write my analysis. After looking through my matrix and the significance of each of them I will be writing about the similarities of each of the articles that I think will be important to use.   I have be looking at my sub topics in more depth and looking for more relevant information that can be used to write my chapters. This weeks reading has taken a bit longer then it should as I think its important that I fully understand what I am looking at and what I am using to conduct my analysis.  What I have learnt from narrowing things done is that a lot of articles I have read and saved onto my computer are all repeating the information which I need, this means to me anyway that them documents are essential for my analysis.  (Update) After speaking to Shaun this morning, I am starting to feel more confident in my topic, I am aware that I need to work more on my matrix for my second topic which I am ...

Hey guys, Today I will be talking about Unity Tutorial 5. In this tutorial we went back to the same game as last week but just continued to create a better game.  We cleaned up the game a bit and used code to make the animals move at different paces, we also learnt how to spawn the food for the animals to collect. We also created more code so our player can fire projectiles at them. The only problem is that when the food and the animals collide nothing happens until further along the tutorials we learnt how add colliders. This made the game more interesting as you could see the animals and food react to each other.   The second tutorial was like a quiz on what we have learnt from the last few tutorials. It was good to put the skills i have learnt into practice. Overall I am really enjoying unity this semester.   -Elizabeth

Hey guys, On this weeks blog I will be talking about conducting and writing my analysis. First of all I looked up the steps to take when writing a lit review. Here I narrowed down exactly what I need to do before I begin to write.  https://libguides.uwf.edu/c.php?g=215199&p=1420520  this is the article I read.  When looking through my research I am still finding it difficult to narrow down the really important parts as I feel like they are all important especially for writing a lit review. I have also begun in a word document copying and pasting information from articles that I have read. I have been also looking at the chapters of books very careful to make sure I don't waste my time looking through each heading of the books I have found such as ... As game level design is one of my topics I will be looking closely into this book which you can find through this link  https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/An-Architectural-Approach-to-Level-Design...

Hey Guys,  Welcome back to my blog, this week I will be talking about Unity Tutorial 4. In these tutorial we created a more player friendly game with more interaction.  In this game we added animals and food items for the animals to eat.  We are using many of the skills we learnt last week which is good as I left like it refreshed my memory but also I'm starting to remember the code that I need to make characters move within the game.  (Screenshot of my own unity) I found this tutorial very long and if I took a 10 minute break I would find it hard to get back into the rhythm of coding again. I can say that with unity this year i'm finding these tutorial much more beneficial and I feel like I am learning something by doing it step by step.  (Screenshot of my code) When the game is completed the player has to shoot the food at the animals to collect points. Overall I enjoyed this weeks unity tutorials! 

Hey Guys, Welcome back to my blog, this week I have been researching my two topics which I talked about in my last blog post. I am not going to lie I am still trying to get my head around the referencing and finding it difficult finding article which would be beneficial to me and my research.  Anyway I started with making my folders, this is to make sure everything is organised correctly and I don't forget about important documents and articles I have read with valuable information which I could use in the future. This look some time as I had to make different grids within the folders but I am happy it is now done.  (screenshot of my folders) I then went onto using google scholar to help me search for documents, here I ran into a bit of difficulty but soon resolved it and got back on track. The first thing I looked up was "What is level design" i found this article  An Architectural Approach to Level Design . By looking at the different heading thi...

Hey Guys, Welcome back to my blog, after many hours of honestly not having a clue whether I am doing this right or wrong I started just thinking and writing about my two topics for the book we are writing.  1) What is level design? 2) The key principles of level design. I began by asking myself questions which you can see below in the images I have attached.  I underlined the important words which will be my main focus for researching.  For Level I thought about the similarities of each level, how with each level the character could be upgraded, how many levels they would be, how difficult they will be as the game progresses on, will the game change as you go onto higher levels.  For Design  I thought about the layout of each level, is the game 2D or 3D, will the design of the game change on different devices that you can play it on, the visual design elements - the colours, the mood and the different genres.  I also looked...

Hey Guys, Welcome back to my blog, today I will be talking about what I learnt in week 3's unity tutorials.  This week I learnt more about #cScript, I feel like I am finally getting the hang of the coding and it is not as daunting as semester 1 which is very good.  In last weeks unity we added in our obstacles but now in week 3 we used code to move around these obstacles instead of crashing into them. I did have difficulty with the left & right movement in the code. I followed everything in the tutorials but truck does seem to want to go left or right which is annoying. I have deleted the code twice and rewrote it again but it still isn't changing. I will keep playing around and see how I can fix it over the weekend! Anyway.... we also got to add in an airplane into our game. This was difficult as now they have stopped with the unity videos and you have to try figure it out on your own! They have step by step instructions but I feel like I get confused easil...

Hey Guys,  Welcome back to my blog, we are finally in semester two and starting unity all over again but this time now I know what to expect so it does not seem as horrible like last semester! So anyway what I am really liking about the unity tutorials this year that they are step by step on the unity website, I am finding this a great help as I am not loosing my focus trying to jump between the video and doing the action on unity as they give you time at the end of each video and run through each step this way they make sure you don't fall behind. What I am also enjoying is the step by step process which you have to complete. I felt a sense of achievement once I completed each step.  I was also shown #cScript again but this time it was step by step. This really helped me understand more about #cScript. I found weeks unity very long as it took 3 and half hours maybe even a bit longer but that is the estimate time to complete the tutorials.  Overall I enj...

Hey Guys, Welcome back to my blog, It's been a long week, thank god we only have one more week left!  So all week I have been working on my game, unfortunately I got the code working but I have way to many errors popping up which means it wont make my character move! My coins are working, my wind-zone is working and so is my sky-box but the most important bloody part wont! I have created so many different character and entered the code which is needed for each of them and none of them will work!  I also think one of my problems is that my world is too large with to many different effects going on through out it. I know what your going to say... "delete some of it" but that is not an option as I lost my first game and had to start it all over again so honestly I am petrified to touch it and delete things I don't really need.  (screenshot from my own unity)  (screenshot of my own unity) (screenshot of my own unity) As you can see from...

Hey Guys, That time of the week again... Unity! I am also feed up of looking for more tutorials as the ones I have found in previous weeks are the only ones I am using.  Anyway.. This week I am looking at two different tutorials. The first one is about  Collecting Coins . In my game I have decided to add coins instead of gems. With this being the last week of making my game I have a lot of work still left to do as my game deleted from my unity and over the weekend I had to start again.  I have learnt from this tutorial that no matter what I am going to have to use within my game i need to code which is actually killing me. The second tutorial I looked at was again  How to Create a Character  again because I lost everything I am back to square one again. I remember a little bit of how to do it but I did need a recap again as it has been a while since making one. Anyway the weekend is coming closer and I will be very busy trying to complete my...

Hi Guys, Welcome back to my blog, its finally week 11 which means we are almost at the finish line! Its been a long semester I can tell you that much! I know its only Sunday but as I am sitting here building more of my world I thought it would also be a good idea to do the reading before Tuesday as it then gives me an extra hour on Tuesday to do something else!  Anyway this week I am reading an article called  Giving Criticism- The good, the bad, the ugly! I really enjoyed reading this article and I found it very relate able, for instance when the author talked about how when you say you don't like something it could end up in an argument it is so true, I always find when it happens to me I'm like please do not ask me for my option if you do not want me to be 100% honest with you! You have to be able to talk criticism without being offended as we are just giving our honest option!. Constructive criticism  offers valid feedback which is both positive...

Morning Guys, Welcome back to my blog, today I will be talking about game stories from two different articles I have read. The first article was called  Into The Woods: A Practical Guide To The Hero Journey.  By Bob Bates. In this article Bob Bates explains to us how a hero's journey is very important within a game as myths are important, he explains that myths convey the values of society, they teach us who we are and how we should behave, they are a guide for our actions, they aren't just dusty old books. Myths are influenced by Moral Values, Mysteries of Life and Death, Communities and Personal Identity. Bob goes on to explain that myths are wired into all of us, they drive humanity to carry on because without them we would easily fall into madness causing us to suffer from depression and other mental illnesses.  I found this article to be very interesting, I liked how he compared our myths to the myths within a game and he referenced lots of different books...

Hi Guys, Welcome back to my blog, today I will be talking about Alpha within my game. This is going to be a quick blog post as I stupidly left my laptop charger in college and my laptop is slowly dying so I need to get this done asap! So the alpha within my game... I have no idea what that means.  Now that I have looked it up I know that is means features and elements that are finished. Unfortunately I am still slowly getting there with my game. I am still moving different things around but I have the Sky box complete and I am happy with how that looks. I have majority of my paths made for my trail. I still need to add the water and walls and different gems within my game but over all I am happy with my process.  I still have 2/3 weeks to complete my game so I don't want to rush it and I will have it finished by the deadline. After speaking to Shaun and explaining that my game will not be playable he gave me great advice to screen record my game and do a voice...

Hi Guys, Welcome back to my blog, today I will be talking about my process in this module.  Looking at the process chat and the email Shaun sent today I am extremely happy, I have done every blog post since September except for week 8's weekend work (the week got away from me and I was trying to catch up on myself!!🙈). For the amount of stressing I have already done this year I was happy to see that some of it was paying off. Don't get me wrong I sometimes feel like the stress is coming over me but when I see good results I feel like it is all worth it.  Back in September when I done my schedule for this module I was determined to stick to it but that wasn't the case, but the one thing I am proud of is I have gotten the work done in the end and my end result will show that. I do think the extra credit is a great idea but I have only done it once or twice and that is because of time but when I have a spare hour in the next 2 weeks I plan on doing some more.  ...

Hi Guys, Welcome back to my blog, today I will be talking about comments & feedback as it is review week! Looking over the comments I have been given from my fellow classmates they have been very helpful, they have given me suggestions which I have taken and put into action, they have also given me advice on there thoughts of my game and everyone seems excited to see my final product which in a way is good but also quite scary in case it all goes wrong and the game isn't even playable! 🙈 But overall I do think getting feedback from people whether it is good or bad is very important in this assignment process as I like to see peoples options on my game. The only thing I will say is sometimes when people give me feedback it is not very clear and can be quite confusing to understand where they are coming from with the comments they have made. But overall I am happy with everything else that people have commented on! https://uxplanet.org/real-world-vs-lab-feedback...

Hi Guys, Welcome back to my blog, as it is week 9 of the semester we are now half way through - isn't that bloody crazy! Feels like is was only September yesterday 😓 but I am going to talk about how I think i'm getting on in this module so far while trying to juggle everything else this year keeps throwing at me! So here goes..... Overall I am really enjoying reading different articles, I haven't missed any of the readings yet as I have been trying my best to keep up to date with them. I have enjoyed some of them but being dyslexic reading is like my worst nightmare, I always have to read it twice to understand exactly whats the person is trying to explain so that is very time consuming but the one thing these readings have me doing is actually reading... I never read, I always put it off as I find it difficult so even though it takes some time I am enjoying it. The reading which I most enjoyed was probably one of the first readings I done in this module which wa...

Hi Guys, Welcome back to my blog, today I will be telling you about the different unity tutorials I found online to help me with the process of making my game.  The first tutorial I looked at was  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqfrREmWvC0 , in this tutorial we learnt how to create a character in unity. I went looking for this tutorial first because in my game I need the player to make a character to play with. The tutorial is quite short but at the same time it gives you all the information that you need.  The second tutorial I looked at was  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdOFUFMiPDU , in this tutorial its all about how to make your character jump as in my game the player will need to make there character jump over certain objects to collect different gems to score points.  In the third tutorial I looked at, it was about how to create a island, now my game isn't on an island but it was good to know and understand how to add water and d...