The Weekly Developments

This tutorial was on the harder side for me. First, I started the Sprite Animation. I didn't struggle too much at the start with code or actions, I just couldn't find some of the windows and places where I had to make the changes. After a Google search I eventually found what I needed. The animation creation of the robot is quite tedious and it takes a lot of repetition but I definitely know how to do it now.  Next, the Ruby animation was already set up so I flew through that. It was interesting looking at what triggers what and the actions it creates.  I struggled a lot with the second tutorial. I followed the code and checked it over and over but when it got to making a projectile prefab game object in my code, it did not show up in the editor anywhere. Unfortunately, I really needed to work it out to continue on. I googled it and tried everything but it just wouldn't work. I also messaged the class in Slack but no one got back to me. I've spent over 3 hours just tryi...

This week we had to go through our bibliography and find themes for our own work. I chose just to use Microsoft Office Word as it was easier to just type and point out the quotes as I'd done the hard work of finding the quotes and summarizing them in my previous blogs. I found it easy to add little notes as it was all laid out right in front of me - it was a similar idea to how when I was reading my papers, I was highlighting important points and adding in my own commentary on the side, whether a summary of what was said but in my own words or just a note like 'great quote talking about the current RPG world', for example.  While I'd been reading these papers, I had noticed some themes anyway. I didn't find it too difficult to find themes because I was already conscious of them. It was more so finding out how to link them to each other. Some had several themes and some were blatantly just one. Mental Health and Social Skills were both connected in a lot of ways but ...

This week I decided to see if I could do the type test again and compare my results from last November. Last year I got 53 WPM with 97% accuracy on my first try. On my second try, it was 56 WPM at 99% accuracy.  This year, my first attempt was 54 WPM with 98% accuracy. My second attempt gave me my highest score and I was clearly on a roll.  (screenshot from typing.com, my high score of 70 WPM at 99% accuracy) If anyone is in need of a fast typer with good accuracy, I'm available.

 This week, I continued to look for articles and journals about my topic - RPG. Paper 1:  Brehm, A. (2013). Navigating the feminine in massively multiplayer online games: gender in World of Warcraft. [online] p.903. Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00903/full [Accessed 18 Feb. 2021]. This paper takes on the topic of how women are treated in RPG online experiences, particularly World & Warcraft. It discusses how gender norms are put on people through media and society and how this isn't just in the obvious places but it also carries over to online games. The author talks about how it's often assumed that video game players are considered more violent as they show these qualities more often, but it's also considered that these kinds of people already have these traits before they pick a game up and possibly gravitate towards games more than others.  The paper then dives into sexism and how it's quite prevalent in the gaming world. ...

 In the first tutorial, the tutorial went through adding a health bar. I thought it was really interesting and it was nice to be using scripts again. So far there's been less coding involved which is nice, since I don't like code that much, but when it does come up it is a nice change. The health bar was also something I'd never done before so I enjoyed creating one myself.  (screenshot, my healthcollectible script) The scripts got a bit confusing toward the end but there was a 'check your script' part which was incredibly helpful. Before finding that, I had keep moving and deleting things in the script because I couldn't work out where it belonged. The error went away, somehow, but it wouldn't work. That's when the script check became useful. Then I went on to the next tutorial about taking damage. This was interesting when we added the enemy and started using everything from before to build the enemy. There was a lot of coding in this tutorial and it d...

 I did a tech task this week where I used Adobe Spark to make a quote graphic. I liked this quote from Albert Einstein, I found it really interesting and relevant to this module. I also felt like the background was relevant.

This week, I read through 4 of the articles I picked to read for research. My reflections are below. Paper 1:  Mendoza, J. (2020). Gaming Intentionally: A Literature Review of the Viability of Role-Playing Games as Drama-Therapy-Informed Interventions. Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses . [online] Available at: https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/expressive_theses/322/ [Accessed 18 Feb. 2021]. This paper made some great points about how RPG games affect people and how it is used in therapy for a variety of different disorders. It discusses how there is a stigma around gaming amongst different generations, that arrived some time  between the 70s and 80s. It talks about studies done into this stigma, researching was it true - does gaming, particularly RPG gaming, lead to aggression, violence or mental disorders? Speaking of these studies; "th ey all have several key similarities:  they show that only a minority of practitioners believe that engagement in RPGs marks a sign o...

 I changed my theme!

This week, I began my Unity tutorials decorating the world of Ruby's adventures. There was a lot of small bits here, fixing this and that but it was nice to see how big a difference small changes make.  (screenshot, where I put my metal cube) Then, I had make a prefabs folder and eventually, change the colour of my metal cube to a different colour. I chose pink but it looks red.  (screenshot, my different coloured metal cube) I found this tutorial helpful as it was showing me what I can do with something I'm adding to the scene that isn't just scripts. I really liked that element and had some fun with it. The next was about making Ruby work correctly in her world. First was using rigidbodies. We used them for 3D last year, so I'm interested to see if they're any different in 2D.  I find it really helpful when the steps are explained and I can see why  I'm doing something, what it does. It helps to build my knowledge for the next tasks, whereas last year I felt l...

 This week, we had to find articles for our relevant topic and come up with a referencing system. I initially wanted to write about the playstation, but struggled to find useful and legitimized articles, papers etc. I think settled on RPG games as I have an interest in and knowledge of them and also found relevant information. Something I found really helpful is the MyBib Chrome Extension. I've found that if a PDF or article doesn't already come with a 'suggested' reference, then this alternative is very helpful. It also allows you to have multiple projects in one place so that you don't have things overlapping but are, instead, very organised. I'll also keep track of these papers I come across in my Multi Dev 2 folder on One Drive in a document. To search for my papers, I have Googled different places to find academic papers, asked friends in college elsewhere, and will use the library too.  My bibliography can be found here : https://www.mybib.com/j/BrownGlibA...

This week, I had a few tasks to do. Initially, I had to redownload Unity and the Unity Hub because I know you (very fortunately) got a new laptop this semester. This was a bit more difficult than it should have been because I had used Unity on Windows last year and this year it's on a Mac so somethings were a little different and I also just forgot what to download. Then I struggled with getting the project to open but got there eventually. The first task was setting up the project - Ruby's 2D Adventure and then running through controls and views which we would've been familiar with from last year anyway. It was important though because it reminded me of things I would definitely forget when I'd need them most. The next task was to put Ruby into her new world. I had another issue with this as a few of the instructions we were given didn't match up to what actually needed to be done. I finally got some things done, got the script filled in and I encountered yet anoth...

  #dmed2023 I was hopeful this semester and module I would be more successful with Unity but so far I've uninstalled it 5 times and it still doesn't work pic.twitter.com/EbzBIioPNc — Rosie (@Rosie78976548) February 2, 2021 For this week's extra credit, I learned how to embed a tweet into a blog post.