Tutorial

On Friday I had a useful 1:1 tutorial with Thom where we discussed the progress of the game and goals moving forward. My notes were a bit hasty so that I could get info down in time:

World Without

• See the environment change based on research
• Make sure to note down original inspiration from research
• Ask peers for help on object design
• Conjoin spheres on a spline? Something blobby as a player reward
• Download some assets from sketchfab; may need to convert from obj
• Focus on gameplay first

Dev Log / Game Principles

• Focus on detail of why I did stuff in dev log
• Positive feedback loop/snowball effect – cumulative effect
• Achievements make subsequent achievements easier
• Ernest Adams: Fundamentals of game design p429
• Katie Salen: Rules of play p341-361
• Talk about experience with inspirational games – based on theoretical terms – player centric design

Research Project

• Switch topic to arcade culture: have a hypothesis
• Compare material conditions of entertainment culture to the physical space of arcades
• Get popularity figures for various machines
• Coin operated Americans – Carly Kocurek
• Retro vs ticket vs modern arcade game
• Definitely case study rhythm games
• Game models: getting people to stick to games

Chapter Ideas

• Analyse what business model supports arcades through…
• Monetisation models: mobile vs arcade
• Social prestige
• Links to pachinko parlors – ticket arcade buildings
• And then analyse the culture surrounding it

Structure Ideas

Define key terms and scope of analysis + a hypothesis – what do arcade games do to create a positive user experience, player satisfaction, ensure popularity of games
Rhythm game case study – at home vs arcade vs mobile
Conclusion should analyse the hypothesis results based on gathered evidence

A World Without Project

I added a variable to the fodder to track which level they are placed in, which I manually apply to the fodder on each level. I’m planning to only include 5 levels to simplify this, but changing this variable to be a switch case on the level name would be more efficient for more levels.

I didn’t know switches existed in unreal until the following week, so I used the following inefficient code to branch 5 different player size variables that tracked which level the fodder came from and adjusted that specific variable:

This was to enable a different max size goal per level. Looking at this I was certain a fix existed, but during the week I didn’t figure out that “get level name” was a built in command and web searching it didn’t help me out.