"Reading 8"

My Week 8 Reading

Link to image here

I am contributing to the chapter 1 under the heading "Serious games" in this I hope to explain how serious games help with things such as learning and training often in things such as simulation type games. I admit with the recent weeks I have not been as focused as I have with deadlines quickly approaching and this corona virus scare, However I have managed to find a total of  5sources which can be seen below. 

Sources

• Serious games that can educate, train and inform
• Serious Games: An Overview by Susi, Tajra and Johannesson, Mikaek and Backlund
• Why So Serious, on the relation of serious games and learning
• "Serious Games and Innovative Technologies in Medical Education in Bulgaria
• Why and How Serious Games can Become Far More Effective: Accommodating  Productive learning Experiences, Learner Motivation and the monitoring of learning Gains

I plan to gather at least 3 more sources for more info as I feel I need more information on my chapter before writing it as I feel I am still missing quite a bit. I also plan to hand write out each of these previous things on a page under the following things below to make it easier for myself gathering the information for the sources.

1. Study Parameters
2. Thesis
3. Primary Sources
4. Research Questions
5. Conclusions
6. Limitations/ Gaps and weaknesses
7. Strengths
8. Significance
9. References

My Conclusion from what I read so far

From what I have read so far from the sources I have gathered there is a very positive attitude towards the use of serious games especially in its aspect of use in things such as training and education. I can honestly see it becoming a more commonly used gaming type I the future as it can be used in so many different fields from games such as "Big Brain Ac

academy" on the Nintendo ds to help with learning to things such as "surgeon simulator" to help the person learn more about their topic of choice through a game in a more fun/ engaging way.

My written out source info layout

Note : Just need to type out in excel

Unity tutorial 06

Unity Tutorial 06

So for this weeks Unity tutorial I was tasked with following  video tutorials from the official unity site and ended up following these particular tutorials.

3.1 Jump Force

For this Tutorial I was tasked with to learn how to set up gameplay by spawning things such as obstacles at particular timed intervals and getting the player to jump using the space bar button on the controls, however in the end when I was trying to spawn these obstacles they were not appearing visibly on screen which made it hard to locate it. however after removing the code and re- typing it it seemed to work. Another issue however that I couldn't seem to fix was that that when my player had jumped the ground did not seem to be registering/existing after the act. I tried following the video but could not find out the issue. I did also like the addition of  making your own unique background to suit the setting of the game itself.

3.2 Make the World Whiz

For me this task was quite straightforward I just followed the instructions from the guide I linked in the heading and it seemed to work quite well. The issue I had with this program was only getting the obstacles to not re-spawn afterwards. But for some reason this did not seem to work.

Link to where I found this image here

3.3 Don't Just Stand There

I found this one program to be quite difficult and couldn't complete it in the end. This was due to the not being visible after I place the code in exactly as it was in the Unity video tutorial video. This made it difficult to animate the character int hitting these obstacles as they could not be seen. I did however keep getting errors which makes me think I am missing something in the code, but from rechecking the code I could not find anything missing.

Reading

My reading for week 5

Hi folks so for this week I finally got feedback on how my progression has been going and overall I feel like I am getting back on course for doing it the correct way. I decided in the future for getting my sources to stick to using google scholar instead of using my colleges libraries sources. I may change my mind on this in the future but until then im gonna stick with this program. 

So from the feedback session I had with my lecturer I wrote down  what I am required to use in the future and a research method to help me have a process to work upon (and possibly improve in the future). this includes the following things

1. Collecting material on the topic
2. take notes/ read material
3. look for things in common between them , such as topics themes etc
4. making each theme into its own heading/paragraph
5. Writing content on the paragraph of readings

Now that I have gone over my research plan. I am going to place below some of the references I have chosen and discuss why I think they are relevant or not.

As you probably know from my previous blog unlike many others researching two different subjects for the book I am focusing on on being "Serious Games". In doing so I have found these below which I feel are helpful in me understanding more about serious games and why.

Source 1

The first source I looked at this week was Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform as i found it interesting as it was written by David R Michael who has been a successful independent software developer for over 10 years. The book was published back in 2005, meanwhile the other author Sande  Chen has been active in the gaming industry for over five years and was even a speaker at the 2005 game developers conference. Having this book from the perspective of two people working within the topic of serious games offers much potential insight as it allows us to look at many things to do with it. overall I didnt find too much to read on this but figured I would give it a try as I found having it come from two perspectives in the industry it may be more informative.

Source 2

The second source I found was titled Serious Games: An Overview by Susi, Tajra and Johannesson, Mikaek and Backlund, per  )and discussed that not only what serious games are and how it may benefit a player in ways such as allowing players to experience certain situations in a more safe and risk free way as well as saving the player/ training any other ways in both timing and cost effectiveness.  I also liked that this source labelled the types of fields/markets in which these games may be explored. from things such as education and health care to things such as military training and corporate games. The report also allows some insight into serious games in both the European and North American Market. allowing me to branch out from my previous source from last week targeting one countries perspective and instead focus the perspective from a more global standpoint.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages

Skövde: Institutionen för kommunikation och information , 2007. , p. 28


Source 3

For my third source I found this reading titled "Why So Serious, on the relation of serious games and learning"https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00692052/ as well as a PDF  describing many issues such as  addressing how although serious games are becoming more popular , as well as discuss possibilities for serious games in terms of an educational usage and the inclusion of more potential COTS (commercial off the shelf games) for the purpose learning. I found this interesting to read as it focused on things such as comparing other similar educational concepts such as elearning and education from an entertainment standpoint(ex TV) to serious games to show more relations than at first glance.

Overall I feel I am getting a better perspective of what I need in order to progress in the coming weeks as well as feel I need to start getting the sources placed back into the matrix to make putting my contribution to book easier overall and to learn how to do Harvard referencing more in the future so that I can work with it n future assignments.

Dillon "reading 2" planning

         
                                                           B00121743: Planning my Approach

Hey folks I am back again and have layed out the 5 topics in which I worked on for this weeks reading blog. These included:

Choosing my topics for the proposed book outline. The two topics I chose to use were from the chapter one section and were under the chapter names and subtopics of "games for entertainment"and "Serious Games". For this I am tasked with researching for two subtopics headings from the same chapter (Chapter 1) and to also provide feedback for peers in my class on their quality of work as they will for me also in the coming weeks.

Image of my choices I chose for the proposed book

For me to progress in this topic to help discuss certain topics as I go along in the coming weeks. I am hoping that with the help of the artist review matrix that I got from  the title of "planning my approach" in my semesters calendar. With this I will hopefully be able to plan out each of my topics in a certain order so that I do not have to worry about repeating myself as much as i progress in coming weeks.

The Artist Review Matrix consist of the following things

• Study Parameters
• Thesis
• Primary Sources
• Research Questions
• Conclusions
• Limitations/ Gaps and weaknesses
• Strengths
• Significance
• CEI Context
• References

I feel this will also help me to not talk about parts/topics that other colleagues that are also working on this will be covering.My main goal is to cover articles and opinions/ blogs that people have written on these topics to give me more of n understanding of my chosen topics and to not just start writing blog pots on things that I have not understood for the sake of filling a page , as I feel in the long run this approach would be disastrous overall.

                             Me trying to get back into the swing of things        

Link to image :Here

Thats abut all I have for this reading blog. Hopefully I can add more content in the coming weeks to be a bit more informative.I hope you guys enjoyed reading and Ill see you in the next blog.

Unity week 3

B00121743 Dillon's Unity Blog :week 3

Image of my Unity tutorial :week 3

 For week threes unity it is a continuation of the unity tutorial  this included the following things.

The first of which was finding a way to allow the vehicle to move left and right instead of just forward like it previously did in the last blog. This involved adding more code to the c script, implementing the camera and objects in the world and making sure there is no faults in the code or assets.

By the end of that tutorial I managed to have the car in the unity moving both left and right . for the second part of this week's tutorial which put my skills from the previous tutorial to the test for a provided challenge/quiz. I was given assets of a plane flying backwards at a fast speed like in reverse. We had no control over it . What we had to do was slow down the plane, make it fly forward instead of backward and gaining control of its flight overall. It also included fixing the camera.

I found it quite difficult getting use to unity again, but also feel optimistic as I am finding the unity tutorials from the unity site itself more helpful from the  previous johnny Vegas tutorials I tried working through in semester one.

Back at unity

B00121743: Back at Unity Again!!

image of my unity tutorial week 2

Well hi folks here we are again back at Unity after a well needed Christmas break, However instead of making our own game we are instead making a game using a tester that involves us driving ,which will hopefully lead to creating a kart racer overall.

So in this first Unity Tutorial I used a different tutorial to the Jimmy Vegas ones I was finding difficult last semester these tutorials are from the  Unity,s on site that hopefully overall I will find more helpful in making simple designs. for my first Unity tutorial I was tasked with 

• Creating a simple car 
• Adding a bit of road for texture 
• Creating an obstacle to hopefully affect the car overall

I found this quite difficult getting back into it probably because of doing none during the break and also because I was trying to find a way to position the camera in a way that  it doesn't affect the road car or obstacle.

section 1: was implementing the car to the road and the obstacles on the road and implementing the camera to be behind the car



Section 2:Using a code called called c script to help make the car move forward on the road I created and to also make the car react to an obstacle when collided.



Section 3: was implementing camera work in a script to position the camera behind the car as it moves forward.