Week 2

Summary of what I understood/learnt

• A variable is a name to which data can be assigned. It can be accessed and modified at runtime.

• There are multiple types of variable classes such as:

  • Int, which is for whole numbers;

  • Float, which is for non-whole numbers (data must have "f");

  • Bool, which is for true/false data; and

  • String, which is for storing plain text (data must have quotation marks).

• Methods, also known as functions, are an isolated set of instructions in a code that are carried out at runtime. They are stored in a way that allows them to be called upon, therefore reducing code repetition.

• Floats can be created in methods to be exclusive to those methods. This is done by changing the method's "signature" to reflect the specific floats that are being called upon in the method. These floats can then be changed to whatever is specified whenever the methods are called upon (this is passing data into a method).

  • For example, void Explode(float damageAmount, float blastRadius).

• There are multiple methods of classes that are for passing data into them and/or returning data from them. The void class is a class that returns nothing, hence why it is called "void"—this is a class that can only have data passed into it. Something like a string class, however, is a class that returns data; for example, if you make a string method that generates random names in a string and returns that data.

Summary of what I understood/learnt

• A class is a way to group related methods and variables together.

• Aside from organization, classes have an ability that reduces code repetition called "inheritance". This basically allows classes to inherit methods from their parent classes.

  • For example, in creating classes for each animal of the animal kingdom, the parent class called "Animal" has the methods "Eat" and "Sleep". A child class called "Mammal" could then have the method "live birth to offspring". Because Mammal is a child class of Animal, Mammal will have the methods of Animal as well as its own methods.

  • There are some problems that can arise with inheritance. Using the same example, if we create a child class to Animal called "Bird" with the methods "Lay eggs" and "Fly", and then create a child class to Bird called "Penguin", we run into an issue because penguins can lay eggs, but cannot fly—they have that trade-off for the ability to swim, and because the Fly method is in the parent class Bird, there's no real way to remove that method from Penguin.

  • A way to get around this limitation is with the concept of "composition", the idea being to split up the classes so that each one implements a single behaviour. Using the previous example of the animal kingdom, you could create a list of classes such as "Swim", "Walk", "Eat", "Lay eggs", etc., and then construct your animals using the specific applicable classes, kind of like building blocks.

• There are three main ways to use classes, two of which this video discusses: classes as behavioural components and static classes.

• The classes as a behavioural component are scripts that are attached to the objects to drive their behaviour. 

• The behavioural component classes must inherit from Unity's MonoBehaviour class, which contains some common object functionality—some of these functionalities include the Start method, which gets called once at the start of the game, and the Update method, which gets called once every frame. 

  • This is represented by, for example, "class Thing : MonoBehaviour".

• By default, variables are instance variables, which belong to the individual instances of the class. The opposite of this is a class variable, which belongs to the class itself instead of the individual instances.

  • Class variables are represented by adding the keyword "static".

• Static classes are classes that belong to the class and not any specific instance. They can't be attached to objects in the game and must have static variables and methods within it. Static classes are very easy to access from other classes, which makes it well-suited to what's called "Utility classes".

  • For example, in a static class called "Maths", you could have a public static float of pi with the first 10 digits called "pi", and then easily be able to access it from another class by just calling upon it with "float x = Maths.pi", saving you from having to get a reference to a specific instance.

Summary of what I understood/learnt

• You can change the whole layout of your Unity window to whatever layout you want by just dragging the windows to any container in the editor.

• You can save a custom layout in the Unity editor by clicking on the top right button where it says "Default" (by default, if you haven't already used that context menu to change the layout) and pressing "Save Layout..."

• By default, the Unity editor has six windows: the hierarchy, which is a list of all the GameObjects in the scene; the scene view, which is an editor view of the current scene; the game view, which is a runtime view of the current scene (using Camera GameObjects); the inspector, which is the control panel for all the GameObjects and such in the scene; the project viewer, which is the file viewer for your project assets; and the console, which is an output for things like debug logs, warnings and errors.

  • From what I've learnt in the past, you can add more windows to the Unity editor by going to the Window context menu and selecting whatever window you want, such as the Animator window.

• If scripts are dragged from the project viewer onto a GameObject in the scene view, it will assign that script to the GameObject, which can then be viewed in the GameObject's components in the inspector.

• You can start a test run of the scene by hitting the play button at the top, which will then put the scene into a runtime instance. You can also pause the instance as well as step it. Note that anything that's changed in this runtime instance is not saved and will revert back to its original state (before you pressed the play button) once you end the instance.

• You can create multiple different scenes in your project, which can be useful for things like separating a game menu from the game itself. Game scenes are stored and are accessible in the project viewer.

Summary of what I understood

This W3Schools page defines what C# variables are. They are containers for storing data values. It defines the type of variables, such as "int", "char", "string", etc., and then goes into detail about how to declare (create) variables, providing some useful examples alongside it. It also explains constants in variables, which creates a variable that is read-only and cannot be changed under any circumstance. This is expressed by adding "const" to the start of the variable. 

One thing I did notice was the use of "double" for floating point numbers instead of "float", and after doing some research, I found a forum post on Stack Overflow by Khaled Alshaya almost 13 years ago that states that "although double allows for higher precision in its representation, for certain calculations it would produce larger errors. The "right" choice is: use as much precision as you need but not more and choose the right algorithm."[5]

It also goes into detail about display variables, which are used to display variable values to the console window, and shows some examples alongside it. It also tells you about some miscellaneous things such as declaring many variables, which is done by creating a comma-separated list, and C# identifiers, which is basically the unique name that you give a variable.

Summary of what I understood

This Programiz page talks about what C# Operators are and how to use them. Operators are symbols that are used to perform operations on operands (operands may be variables and/or constants). They are used to manipulate variables and values in a program. It provides the example of "2+3" to this, with "+" being the operator and "2" and "3" being the operands in this case.

The page then goes over all the different types of C# operators, some of which include:

• Basic Assignment Operator—used to assign values to variables, and is presented with "=";

• Arithmetic Operators—used to perform arithmetic operations such as addition ( + ), subtraction ( - ), multiplication ( * ), division ( / ), etc. (% for Modulo Operator/Remainder);

• Relational Operators—used to check the relationship between two operands (whether or not the relationship is true or false), and are represented with the following:

  • Equal to ( == );

  • Greater than ( > );

  • Less than ( < );

  • Greater than or equal to ( >= );

  • Less than or equal to ( <= ); and

  • Not equal to ( != ); as well as

• Logical Operators—used to perform logical operation such as "and", "or";

  • Logical operators operate on boolean expressions ("true" or "false") and returns boolean values.

Summary of what I understood

This Wikipedia page talks about conditionals in computer science. Conditionals are programming language commands for handling decisions. Specifically, conditionals perform different computations or actions depending on whether a programmer-defined boolean condition evaluates to true or false. It then talks about the terminology of conditionals and how that varies in the different types of programming, such as the term "conditional statement" in imperative programming languages and "conditional expression" or "conditional construct" for functional programming. It then goes on to talk about expressions such as, but not limited to, the Else if expressions and the If-then-else expressions.

So we are at it again! As last trimester's GAD170 class was a fail (a strategically intentional choice, but a fail nonetheless), I shall be embarking on the journey of the illustrious and legendary Super Blox Man once again! Hopefully this time, Super Blox Man gets the glow up he deserves, as more time can be allocated to working on the projects in this class.

Now onto the most important part for this week: bringing Super Blox Man to LIFE! To make this game, well, a game, we have to give the player some kind of control. In the last trimester, I gave the player direct control over Super Blox Man, where they could move (and strafe) and turn Super Blox Man, as well as making him jump and sprint. The controls were simple, primitive and very janky—the only problem is, the only thing that was actually documented was the sprint mechanic in the advanced player controller. Everything else was not documented, so I will have to go through everything again and document it.

This week was actually my first class for GAD170 this trimester as I had to go to Kalgoorlie for personal reasons. I attended GAD170 last trimester but had to strategically fail the class so I could get my other classes done, and before you think I'm just wording my epic fail for the class, I was given the suggestion to do so by Glen, the guy who I guess oversees the whole Games course. Because I knew what it was I had to do from last trimester and from reading the unit site, I decided to just put on my music and work on my project.

I made a start on my park scene while I was at campus. By the time I had to leave, I had made the floor, the trees with the particle system set up and the textures for all these things. I stayed behind for a while after class to do as much as possible before I was kicked out because of the next class. When I got back home, I spent the next couple of days working on my park scene and finally got it complete. To make the scene look nicer, I decided to add post-processing to my scene with effects such as ambient occlusion, bloom, chromatic aberration, lens distortion, etc. I've messed around with post-processing in the past and I also look at the way games such as Resident Evil 7, Layers of Fear and Silent Hills P.T. handle their post-processing effects, and I try to make it look subtle but also strong enough to make a noticeable difference to the image.

After some further unnecessary-but-also-necessary finishing touches to the scene, I then decided to add in the simple player controller script to make my work for this week's time at least worth while, so I can say I actually did some of what was expected of me this week.

Honestly, it feels good to have more time to be able to do things like this. I feel like I can have more creative freedom with my class work without it having as much of an impact on important time, which is great because I can make stuff that I'd be proud to look back on instead of just seeing my old work as really early "learning-stage" stuff. That being said though, I feel like I might have spent a bit too much time procrastinating and being distracted easily by other things, and therefore I didn't get as much done as I think I should have. Next week I will try to distance myself from the distractions such as Discord or YouTube and focus on getting my stuff done, within reason of course (taking breaks and such), and I'll make sure to do those darn TS reflections and pre-class activities. There's also a set of videos that I need to watch by a certain deadline, so I will need to look into that as well and get that done.

[1]   Sebastian Lague (Producer). (2016, March 21). Introduction to Game Development (E01: variables and methods) [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/9iCnjdXEfMA 

[2]   Sebastian Lague (Producer). (2016, March 23). Introduction to Game Development (E02: classes) [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/XT_CtYN1OOU 

[3]   Sebastian Lague (Producer). (2016, March 25). Introduction to Game Development (E03: Unity overview) [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/L9zlZjxmwXU 

[4]   W3Schools. (n.d.). C# Variables. Retrieved June 19, 2022 from https://www.w3schools.com/cs/cs_variables.php 

[5]   Khaled Alshaya. (2009). Should I use double or float? Retrieved June 19, 2022 from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1074474/should-i-use-double-or-float 

[6]   Programiz. (n.d.). C# Operators. Retrieved June 19, 2022 from https://www.programiz.com/csharp-programming/operators 

[7]   Wikipedia. (Updated 2022). Conditional (computer programming). Retrieved June 19, 2022 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_(computer_programming) 

[8]   Metal Gear Wiki. (n.d.). Hideo Kojima [Image]. https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Hideo_Kojima?file=HideoKojimaInfobox.jpg 

[9]   Capcom. (2017). Resident Evil 7 Official Web Manual > How to Play > Player Actions [Image]. http://game.capcom.com/manual/re7/img/page/22_1_1.png 

[10]   Silent Hill Memories. (2014). Gamescom 2014 P.T. Images [Image]. https://www.silenthillmemories.net/silent_hills/screens/pics/silent_hills_pt_screen_20140814_03.jpg 

[11]   Sergey Nivens. (n.d.). Creative thinking [Image]. Adobe Stock. https://t4.ftcdn.net/jpg/00/70/13/75/360_F_70137599_EwYKIGAPt9zhhteRvC3dOOFrxCdSd95i.jpg