Week 4

• Chosen group for Project 1: Frazer's group with Frazer, Jake and Felix.

• Gitflow system for Git branches (copied from GDD):

  • Main Branch: Absolute root branch. Tracks official release history.

  • Development Branch: Base branch for feature integration, acts as a barrier between feature branches and the main release branch.

  • Feature branch: Branches created for implementation of a specific feature. Gets merged back into the development branch.

  • Release branch: Branch used purely for bug-fixes and release-oriented tasks, not for implementing new features. Separates the development branch from the main release branch. Should be merged into the main release branch, and back into the development branch.

  • Hotfix branch: Branches used to apply patches to the main branch.

General Notes

• Video evidence for brainstorming is accepted.

• Make sure to keep looking at the unit site to keep on track of everything.

Psychology in Games Slides

• Psychological behaviouralism is basically to do with the world around us and how we react to it.

• An example of Classical Conditioning is Pavlov's Dog, which was how a conditioned dog responds to different stimuli. Dogs were conditioned to a bell so that they began salivating when the bell rang, so while a steak was an unconditioned stimulus because it was always a stimulus for the dog, the bell was a conditioned stimulus because it was previously neutral.

• Classical Conditioning is used with marketing and companies such as Christmas marketing and Coca-Cola.

• Operant Conditioning is a common method that puts forward the "Law of Effect" which states that behaviours are related to positive an negative consequences. It uses reinforcement to increase the behaviour and punishment to decrease the behaviour.

• Mystery in narrative is a good tool but must be used wisely. If a game is really bad but the mystery is great, the player will go through hell to get to the bottom of the mystery, and if the payoff is bad, the player is going to be incredibly displeased.

• Virtual identity, presence, the sense of being where you are.

• Self-presence, idk.

• Avatar as Self, identifying with and creating an emotional connection to the character they've made in a game. This means, for example, if something happens to your character, you can have the biological response of heartbreak.

• Social-presence, idk.

Narrative in Games Slides

• My brain turned off just before the Narrative in Games slides started, so just see the slides (right). [Note: I got around 8 + 1 hours of sleep, how tf am I this tired???]

• We sometimes apply narrative to games that don't necessarily have them, such as Tetris which is bringing order to chaos, Pac-Man where you're in purgatory and have to survive against the ghosts and each level is each layer of purgatory, and Space Invaders where you're protecting your motherland from an invasion of alien spacecrafts.

• Ludo-narrative is exploring narrative through mechanics. An example is Hades, where you have to escape hell and you restart back at the start to imply that you can't escape hell, so you keep going through it over and over again and eventually the narrative shifts to where there is an exit. At the end, the narrative shifts again from the starting point of the character hates their dad and wants to get out to get to him, to then not hating their dad and their dad has appointed them as security.

• Ludonarrative dissonance is when the gameplay doesn't match the narrative. See the YouTube video by ProZD on this (right).

• An example of this is in Uncharted, where the cutscenes portray him as an everyday treasure hunter and a likable guy, whereas the gameplay portrays him as a hardened soldier who just wants to kill everything. There is also GTA V where in the story, the characters want to get out of the hard life, but in the gameplay, the characters are going around killing things.

• Ludonarrative dissonance isn't always a bad thing, but it is important how you incorporate it. You can still connect with the game despite ludonarrative dissonance if it's engaging. An important thing is suspension of disbelief, where you can immerse the player despite ludonarrative dissonance.

• Spinning things in narrative can go two days: either people go with it or people get lost.

• Really need to think about ludonarrative for meaningful game project: how do mechanics contribute to the story?

Useful Tools

• Adobe Mixamo is an Adobe product for animating 3D characters for games, films, etc. https://www.mixamo.com/#/ 

• Textures.com is a website for free PBR textures, foliage, etc. https://www.textures.com/browse/3d-scans/114548