Adam's Blog

 Vision Statement Introduction Roll-a-Mole is a fast-paced, top-down re-imagining of the classic arcade game Whack-a-mole.    Roll-a-Mole sets you, the player, in the ring to square off with those pesky moles that are destroying the arena and coming to take your title belt. You can't stand for this and that's why you launch into action rebounding off the ropes to come firing straight back into the action as you try to reach a High-Score and defeat the moles. -Whac-a-Mole, Arcade Game (1975) Background Whack-a-mole is a classic arcade game with physical components such as the mechanical moles that emerge from the holes and the hammer that the player uses to bash them away and gain points. This arcade machine has been taken and spun into so many differing concepts of the original but none have delved into the virtual side of gaming and truly reinvented the core mechanics of this classic video game whilst maintaining the same powerful nostalgia. Until now.  With a virtu...

 Unity Tutorial 3 In Unity tutorial 3 I had to open up a new asset folder and use the assets to make a game about feeding animals. I really liked this tutorial because it branched off into new materials and assets that I had to then apply rules and scripts to.  - Screenshot of the game and its assets I had to program a playable character to be used by the player that could be controlled to go left and right. I also had to learn code that would prevent the character from exiting the view of the camera and is actually something I was wondering while sending my car flying off into the abyss in the previous tutorial. I learnt a lot from this tutorial that I was genuinely curious about because one of my game ideas was very similar to this. It also involved things coming towards the player at random times and random positions.  A script I found useful was the 'Destroy' script that I could code and then apply to game objects that I didn't want existing forever within the game wo...

 Tech Task: Redesigning my Blog After making a handful of Blogger Posts and having initially choosing a quick template and background picture that I liked, I decided I try to make my blog look a bit more unique and make it feel like more of my own space.  I first started off with my icon. I designed my Icon a few years ago when creating a Youtube Channel. I got a few references from the internet and used a free photo editing software called GIMP to pull it all together. After recently realizing I needed an Icon for my blog I figured why not use something that I'm used to so I chose the Black and Blue icon as my icon. The only problem was that in the years since designing this icon my favorite colour has changed from Blue to Red and I thought that maybe I should just simply bring the icon into Adobe Photoshop and change the colours. But once I did that I saw ALL the imperfections I had made when I first designed it. The edges were all misaligned, design-wise the angles were wro...

 Games MDA MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design The first article was an Academic paper by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek, named, "MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research". It was a very easy paper to read compared to the ones I've previously read and I think that's due to the topic being discussed. From this paper I have learned a few things about Game Design, Research and MDA, a framework to help guide Game Developers, Game Designers and Scholars. Basically, MDA stands for Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics and is a formal approach to understanding games and bridges the gap of game design and game development, game criticism and technical game research. Mechanics is the particular components of the game, at the level of data representations and algorithms. Dynamics is the run-time behaviour of the mechanics working on the player inputs and each others outputs overtime.  Aesthetics refers to the desirable emotional responses evoked in the...

  Game Idea Research Whack-a-Mole 3x3 design Roll-a-Mole: The game I chose to try develop was my first idea, Roll-a-Mole. This game is an arcade-like, high-score game where the player takes control of a ball (designs to be developed in future). They are placed in a boxing ring with perimeter of space around a central 3x3 formation of holes. These holes will be used by the moles to pop-up and down. The objective is to send your ball flying around the stage, bouncing off the ropes and controlling it to hit into as many moles and special moles as possible. However, you have to watch out for the bombs. Hit three bombs and you will get a game over. Mechanic 1: For the game to be random and different every time the player plays it, I want to implement the ropes along the sides of the ring to be bouncy and send the player hurdling the other direction when they run into it. Ideally the player will choose a direction to launch at first and from then on they will have perpetual motion until ...

Unity Tutorial 2  I found Unity tutorial 2 very interesting and engaging. Finishing off the car game taught me a few more things that help me when I imagine making a game in the future and I'm excited for it! The plane challenge full of bugs was a good exercise in my opinion as it's easy to just follow someone elses steps and not actually learn anything. Making sense of the code and then rearranging and fixing it was tough but taught me a lot. Figuring out how to make the propeller spin for the bonus task was difficult at first but once I had my c# script set it was easy enough to get it working and tuning it to what I thought looked best visually. -Preview of my development process in Unity Seeing all the little things that need to be coded individually and are most times over-looked by me and other beginner game developers is very fascinating. I have a new-found respect for game developers. I like how when I was fixing up the plane game I could tune everything to how I see f...

 Game Elements Game Elements After reading some of the readings and watching the video along with it I've come to learn that there's a lot more to a game than just a player and an objective. It was good to read in " What are the qualities of Games?  " article, about all the certain things like sequencing, player interaction and theme. I find these articles useful in a way where in order to make a game, you need to know the fundamentals and back-ends to everything that a game inherits or implies. In this article it also dives into critical analysis and how useful it can be for us as we play or create a game. This can help keep the momentum of that fun feeling that a game can give and help us remove any hiccups along the story or mechanics that the game has to run through. Critical analysis can also help with making sure the game is fair and any and all players get the opportunity to fulfill the roles they take within the game. Critical analysis can help with creating n...

 Feedback Thoughts Seven Ways to Crush Self Doubt in Creative Work After reading this blog post by John Spencer there are a few things I picked up while reading. First of all, to tackle self-doubt is a huge undertaking because it's something that's so relevant to us and our lives. It creeps up everywhere once you obtain a perception of yourself. John Spencer believes that self doubt can demotivate a creative thinker or someone who hopes to achieve a goal or end result. He says that self doubt can hinder a persons ability to try and to then try to get better. Which I totally agree with.  Self doubt can stem from comparing yourself to others, even if you're doing a great job and exceeding your own expectations, you will always hold yourself down because your work "doesn't compare" to the work of someone else. The funny thing is though, that person has gone through the same processes, the same trials and tribulations to get their work to the standard they hold. T...

  Game Brainstorm Concept 1: Roll-a-mole So in this game I wanted to create a space where the player had to get the highest number of points before dying or the time running out and what I came up with was this area with a 3x3 square with holes in each section and an extra 1 grid of space around perimeter of holes. The player boundaries is a boxing ring style of ropes which the player can run into and bounce from, sending them back into the action.  The player is a ball that will roll forward very fast and the only control they have is turning them left and right. Their objective is to aim for the moles that pop out of the holes to score points. The first mole is 10pts and the second mole is 50pts. However, there are bombs, much like the ones in minesweeper, that will protrude from the same holes as the moles and if the player hits them they lose 1HP. The goal is to reach a high score before losing all of your lives. I came up with the concept of this when I was asleep an...

 Unity Tutorial 1 I remember as a kid finding out about Unity and how I could download it myself and mess around in it. I would watch Youtube videos for hours trying to decipher what the person was trying to teach me. I got a little bit of understanding but these lessons are structured in a way that lets you figure out the process yourself while creating a game. From unity tutorial 1 I have learned a lot about Unity. I know my way around the application instead of feeling lost and not knowing what each window does. I learned to make my own workspace in Unity to help me feel in control with a better workflow. I learned how to locate and place things into scenes and then create scripts and a script folder. Writing code for the objects came naturally and it was easy to understand what the code meant and what it would do. This made it easier to play around with variables and not break the code.  I really enjoyed the process of "I want this object to do something" and then learnin...

 Game Design After going through the readings and taking notes of a few things there are multiple things mentioned that are very interesting. In "What is a game anyway?" It's very interesting to read about the definitions of games and the arguments about what the fundamentals of a game really are. It's quite calming to see that to create a game you don't need to amass a knowledge of code, you just needed to creative objectives, obstacles and rules.  "Games are a “system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome” " -  What is a game anyway? The studies of  The Organic nature of game design  delve into the natural way game ideas/concepts come about. With the most common practice being "Brainstorming", an easy and efficient way to work as a group and deliver multiple thoughts at once. Brainstorming, in the study, is found to be a very beginner level technique to start thinking creat...

  Growth Mindset -American Psychologist, Carol S. Dweck Until today I had not yet heard of Carol Dweck but I have come across the terms Fixed and Growth mindsets. After watching a few videos on her work I believe that she's correct. The way Carol explains it, children who are new to the education system and are developing their minds and outlooks on life are very malleable and however they are encouraged, it will have a huge effect on them. I used to subconsciously see myself as a fixed mind and that people who are "naturally intelligent" are the ones who just do better and have an easier time improving. Until recently. I found a Philosophy book called "Plato not Prozac!" by Dr. Lou Marinoff, PH.D. In his book he briefly runs over the history of philosophy, the fundamentals, some examples of philosophical counselling and philosophical disposition.  Philosophical Disposition is your philosophical outlook on any matter. It's how you position yourself to take o...

Introduction Post   Hey, how are you? My name is Adam and welcome to my blog. This post will be focused around introducing myself so you get to know a little bit more about me! Me and some of my friends, sometime last year Early Life First off, my name is Adam Patrick Anthony Finn. I was born in the Coombe on March 5th, 2000. My Dad tried to name me Patrick after himself and my Grandad which would have made me Patrick Finn III but my Mam disagreed and I'm kind of grateful for that. Anyway, I grew up around a lot of family as we didn't have a lot back then. I would spend time at my Nana's while my parents worked and made enough money to move into our own house in Ardmore, Tallaght. (if you don't know where that is, it's right next to the lidls that got torn down during the Snowstorm in March 2018) After a while, my sister was born and we decided to move house on St. Patrick's Day 2006 and are now living in Lucan.  Hobbies & Music Taste Skipping ahead, I went ...