Dissertation Bibliography

A full list of reference materials I used in my dissertation:

Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Shreiber (2008), Challenges For Game Designers, Delmar Publishing

Claudio Scolastici (2013), Mobile Game Design, Packt Publishing Limited

Ernst, A., Dormans, J. (2012), Game mechanics : Advanced Game Design, Berkeley: New Riders

Francois Dominic Laramee (2002), Game Design Perspectives, Charles River Media

M. Tim Jones (2010), Game Design - Theory & Practice, Second Edition, Jones & Bartlett Learning

Thomas Finnegan (2013), Unity Android Game Development by Example - Beginner's Guide, Packt Publishing

The Keys For A Successful Mobile Game [ONLINE] Available at: http://greatpreneurs.com/keys-successful-mobile-game/ [Accessed 13th September 2014]

Youtube: androidtechman videos [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/user/androidtechman/videos [Accessed 19th September 2014]

Challenge and Consequence 2: The Reckoning [ONLINE] Available at: http://problemmachine.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/challenge-and-consequence-2-the-reckoning/ [Accessed 7th October 2014]

10 Games That Take Minutes to Learn and a Lifetime to Master [ONLINE] Available at: http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/leisure/brain-games/10-games-minutes-to-learn-lifetime-to-master.htm#page=10 [Accessed 7th October 2014]

Gamasutra: Persuasive Games: Familiarity, Habituation, and Catchiness [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature  /132369/persuasive_games_familiarity_. php?page=1 [Accessed 7th October 2014]

Unity Scripts [ONLINE] Available at: https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modu les/beginner/scripting. [Accessed 25 October 2014]

C# Scripting Tutorials for Unity [ONLINE] Available at: http://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/r unner/. [Accessed 25th October 2014]

Finally, an interactive tutorial series that WILL teach you C# for Unity3D [ONLINE] Available at: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/finally -an-interactive-tutorial-series-that-will- teach-you-c-for-unity3d.175410/.  [Accessed 25th October 2014]

Game Study #1: Bushnell's Law [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/155657-game-study-1-bushnells-law [Accessed 9th November 2014]

Make Pong game with Unity 2D [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.awesomeincu.com/tutorials/ unity-pong/. [Accessed 16th November 2014]

ESA EF 2014 [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ESA_EF_2014.pdf [Accessed 1st December 2014]

Know Your Target Audience: Mobile App Development Tips [ONLINE] Available at: https://fbombmedia.com/know-target-audience-mobile-app-development-tips/#prettyPhoto [Accessed 1st December 2014]

Gamer Demographics that Every Developer Should Know [ONLINE] Available at: http://blog.apptopia.com/game-demographics-that-every-developer-should-know/ [Accessed 1st December 2014]

Mobile Social Gamers: The New Mass-Market Powerhouse [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.flurry.com/bid/57219/Mobile-Social-Gamers-The-New-Mass-Market-Powerhouse#.VKYQfYdGZjI [Accessed 1st December 2014]

Define your target audience [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.eldergame.com/2008/05/define-your-target-audience/ [Accessed 1st December 2014]

5 WAYS TO EMULATE FLAPPY BIRD'S SUCCESS—AND AVOID ITS FAILURE
 [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.fastcompany.com/3028295/lessons-learned/5-ways-to-emulate-flappy-birds-success-and-avoid-its-failure [Accessed 1st December 2014]

6 Lessons Every Entrepreneur Can Learn From Flappy Bird (R.I.P.) [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.shopify.co.uk/blog/12221109-6-lessons-every-entrepreneur-can-learn-from-flappy-bird-r-i-p [Accessed 1st December 2014]

Demographic Breakdown of Casual, Mid-Core and Hard-Core Mobile Gamers [ONLINE] Available at: http://developers.magmic.com/demographic-breakdown-casual-mid-core-hard-core-mobile-gamers/ [Accessed 1st December 2014]

2013 Gamers Survey Results: Demographics, Platforms and Smartphone Use [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/2013-gamers-survey-results-demographics-platforms-and-smartphone-use/ [Accessed 1st December 2014]

Tutorial: How to Make Flappy Bird in Unity3D [ONLINE] Available at: http://anwell.me/articles/unity3d-flappy-bird/ [Accessed 25th December 2014]

Touch: swipe, tap and beyond [ONLINE] Available at: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-8/touch-swipe-tap-beyond [Accessed 27th January 2015]

Touchscreen Gesture Icons [ONLINE] Available at: http://wireframes.linowski.ca/2009/04/touchscreen-gesture-icons/ [Accessed 27th January 2015]

Touchscreen gestures list and names [ONLINE] Available at: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10675359/touchscreen-gestures-list-and-names [Accessed 27th January 2015]

Swipe in all directions Touch and Mouse [ONLINE] Available at: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/swipe-in-all-directions-touch-and-mouse.165416/ [Accessed 8th February 2015]

Unity Documentation: TouchPhase.Moved [ONLINE] Available at: http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/TouchPhase.Moved.html [Accessed 9th February 2015]

Best Practices: Five Tips for Better Playtesting [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/185258/best_practices_five_tips_for_.php?print=1 [Accessed 18th February 2015]

Making Better Games Through Iteration [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132554/making_better_games_through_.php?print=1 [Accessed 26th February 2015]

When Design Iteration Goes Wrong [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PeterAngstadt/20150211/236158/When_Design_Iteration_Goes_Wrong.php [Accessed 26th February 2015]

Game Design Concepts [ONLINE] Available at: https://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/level-16-game-balance/ [Accessed 26th February 2015]

How to save a progress by user with diferent users [ONLINE] Available at: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/201731/how-to-save-a-progress-by-user-with-diferent-users.html [Accessed 12th April 2015]

Unity Documentation: PlayerPrefs.SetInt[ONLINE] Available at: http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/PlayerPrefs.SetInt.html [Accessed 12th April 2015]

Dissertation Summary

All in all thanks to this dissertation I achieved my long awaited goal. As Square Drop, Square Wobble and Square Follow prove - I can now comfortably create simple twitch based mobile games in C#.

Just to show how eventful this dissertation was, here's a breakdown of what happened each month:

September 2014: Coming up with the best dissertation for me
As this post shows, long before my dissertation started, I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve with it. I wanted to learn C# through creating a number of simple prototypes for mobile devices. Initially my plan was to replicate already existing mechanics from a selection games. As pointed out by Dave however, a dissertation which revolves around re-doing games would not have enough depth to be considered a good dissertation.

What makes a dissertation stand out is when a student researches and learns about the topic of their choice, and then proves they have gained that knowledge by producing their own piece of work that follows the theory they've learned about. Depth is what really matters, not the amount of prototypes I can replicate in 8 months.

Hence I changed my plan:

It still focuses on me learning C# as I'll still be creating artefacts for mobile phones, however instead of reproducing prototypes of games that have already been created, I will design and make my own games, following the philosophy of Bushnell's law, one that states - 'All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master.'

October 2014: Theory work
Having sorted out the structure of my dissertation, I spent the entire month researching Bushnell's philosophy. I found out the tools that'd help me make a game easy to learn and tools that'd help me make a game difficult to master. I then decided that I want to make twitch based games, as there's a high market for them (especially for mobile devices). By making twitch games I'd also learn more code due to having to code in physics such as movement or object collision.

I then looked at job adverts to find out what coding qualities companies are looking for, and then I created three timelines - one that was structured around me creating one prototype by the end of the year, one with two prototypes, and one with three. Not knowing what's ahead of me, I had to create three differently scoped timelines, to later adjust to one that suits my abilities and time management best.

November 2014: Learning C# for the first time and designing my first prototype
In November I took my first steps with C# by going through a Pong tutorial. It helped me a lot in getting the hang of syntax and the way in which physics work in Unity. I then designed my first prototype for what turned out to be Square Drop.

December 2014: Developing my first game in C#
At the beginning of December I went through a detailed market research, to make sure that I know who I'm aiming at with my prototypes (which then helped me gather the right demographic of playtesters). Then it was all about developing Square Drop - my first ever game in Unity. Although I sacrificed most of Christmas holidays just to get the game working before 2015, it was totally worth it as I've learnt a lot of C# syntax at that time.

January 2015: Playtesting Square Drop and designing prototype #2
In January I got hold of 20 people to playtest Square Drop. Having received positive feedback about the game being is easy to learn and difficult to master, I decided to not iterate it and instead design a new prototype. That decision was reinforced by the fact that by iterating Square Drop, I wouldn't learn any new code anyway.

To get out of my comfort zone and avoid creating a similar prototype to Square Drop, I decided to design one which involves a different input than tapping, and a different twitch mechanic than timing (which is what Square Drop involved). That's when I designed Square Wobble - a precision game that is controlled by swiping.

February 2015: Developing, playtesting and iterating Square Wobble
February was all about focusing on Square Wobble. Having gained some programming experience from Square Drop, it took me a lot quicker to create my second prototype. As it turned out, players did not like the swipe mechanic, so I replaced it with the reliable tap one.

During that month I've also done some research on playtesting, and iterating, to improve in these areas, since Dave told me he was scepical about the way I dealt with them.

March 2015: Designing, developing and playtesting prototype #3 
March was a rush month, because I had to make sure I get my third and last prototype ready for playtesting before everybody leaves for Easter holidays (if I let playtesting happen after Easter I'd just have 2 weeks left for iterations). I designed a game called Square Follow which is controlled using a drag input and is based on a pure speed twitch mechanic. Once again, to learn more C#, I made sure that I created a prototype which differs from the other ones.

The game proved to be too easy to some and too difficult to others. That's when I made use of the knowledge gained from October and added tuning to the game.

April 2015: Iterating Square Follow and doing first polish work
In april I iterated Square Follow and, since I had completed more prototypes than I had even planned at the beginning, I could start concentrating on polish work. I added a high score, and a restart button, I named the files, prefabs and classes correctly, added comments to code, organised the folders and so on.

May 2015: Polishing all prototypes
At the beginning of May I improved the performance of all three prototypes. I tidied up their code, I got rid of the bugs and I made them work smoother than ever. Since, thanks to player feedback and iterations they are fun to play on top of that, there's nothing stopping me now from handing them in for marking, and celebrating for what has been a fulfilling year!

C# I've learned throughout dissertation

Here's a list of the C# syntax I learned throughout this dissertation:

Function purpose	Syntax
Spawning an object	Instantiate(object_name,transform.position, Quaternion.identity);
Removing an object	Destroy(gameObject);
Controlling the position of an object	object_name.transform.Translate (x position, y position, z position);
Moving an object	var vel = rigidbody2D.velocity; vel.x = object_speed;  rigidbody2D.velocity = vel;
Referring to a particular object	GameObject.Find("object_name");
Referring to a tag	CompareTag ("tag_name");
Collision detection	void OnTriggerEnter2D(Collider2D);
Returning a random number from a specified range	Random.Range(minNum, maxNum);
Accessing a variable from another class	GameObject variableName = GameObject.Find("object_name"); Class_Name classVariableName = variableName.GetComponent<Class_Name>();
Calling a function from another class	objectVariableName = GameObject.Find("object_name").transform; objectVariableName.gameObject.SendMessage ("Spawn",null,SendMessageOptions.RequireReceiver);
Calling a class every so seconds	InvokeRepeating("function_name", startTime, repeatitionTime);
Adding an OnClick listener	Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0);
Reloading a level	Application.LoadLevel(0);
Spawning text	GUI.Label(new Rect(x position, y position, x size, y size), "text");
Setting the game orientation to portrait	Screen.orientation = ScreenOrientation.Portrait;
Playing audio	if (!audio.playOnAwake){ audio.Play(); }
Adding a swipe input	if(Input.touches.Length > 0){  Touch t = Input.GetTouch(0);  if(t.phase == TouchPhase.Began){   //save began touch 2d point   firstPressPos = new Vector2(t.position.x,t.position.y);  }  if(t.phase == TouchPhase.Moved){ //use .Ended for slower response time   //save ended touch 2d point   secondPressPos = new Vector2(Input.mousePosition.x,Input.mousePosition.y);        //create vector from the two points   currentSwipe = new Vector2(secondPressPos.x - firstPressPos.x, secondPressPos.y - firstPressPos.y);        //normalize the 2d vector   currentSwipe.Normalize();   //swipe left   if(currentSwipe.x < 0 && currentSwipe.y > -0.5f && currentSwipe.y < 0.5f){    rightSwipe = false;    leftSwipe = true;   }   //swipe right   if(currentSwipe.x > 0 && currentSwipe.y > -0.5f && currentSwipe.y < 0.5f){    leftSwipe = false;    rightSwipe = true;    if (!audio.playOnAwake){     audio.Play();    }   }  } }
Adding a drag input	//when using mouse Vector3 touchPos = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition);    // get the current position of the player GameObject Vector3 originalPos = this.transform.position;    // replace the x coordinate with the x of touched pos. originalPos.x = touchPos.x;    // set the player position to the modified one this.transform.position = originalPos;
Adding a highscore	public int score; public int highscore; //retrieve highscore highscore = PlayerPrefs.GetInt("High Score"); //set new highscore if(score > highscore){  highscore = score;  PlayerPrefs.SetInt("High Score", highscore); }
Adding a restart button	if(GUI.Button(new Rect((Screen.width / 2) - 160,(Screen.height / 2) - 40, 320, 80), "Again?")) {  Application.LoadLevel(0); }

Polishing Square Follow

Since Square Follow already went through polishing throughout Easter holidays when I had a lot of time to work on it, only a few changes took place in it compared to the previous prototypes:

• Collectable spawn rate increases more gently
• The difficulty raises quicker than before so that high skilled players find the game challenging quicker than before and don't need to wait too long for the game to get hard. Lower skilled players can still easily catch the first few collectables
• Renamed classes and objects from obstacle to collectable
• Added more comments to the code
• Added sound when the player catches a collectable for feedback purposes, and to inform that they've gained a point

Here's the updated code:

Square Class:

CollectableClass:

CollectableGeneratorClass

GUIClass:

Now that I have polished all prototypes, there's not much else for me to do but to submit them on a CD for marking purposes.

In my next post I will write a summary where I will talk about what I've done throughout this dissertation and what I make of it.

Polishing Square Wobble

This weekend I carried on working on my prototypes, this time - Square Wobble. These are the things that I have polished:

• Just like in Square Drop, I removed the sensors and gap in the obstacle prefab, and instead simply created an empty gap between the left, and the right obstacle arms.
• Because I used to give a point during the gap onTriggerExit and now the gap object is no more existent, I put an object in front of each obstacle, so that when the square touches it, it gives a point instead
• Because of removed redundant objects, the code is now a lot shorter and cleaner than before, making the game should work smoothly.
• Added the highscore
• Added the restart button
• Added new skins making the score always appear in the middle, and highscore in the top right corner with smaller font
• Renamed some variables and objects so that they refer to clicking and not swiping as it used to be before the iteration
• Renamed ObstacleSpawnClass to ObstacleGeneratorClass and ClickClass to InputClass so they make more sense (will do the same in Square Drop)
• Learned how to have multiple sounds in one object by using variables to trigger them. Now the square has both - the point received sound, and the game over sound
• Updated obstacle spawning. Used the same way of coding as the one in Square Drop.
• Moved the spawn point from the position where I want the obstacles to start spawning as opposed to saying it through the code so that I don't need to remember know the y coordinates of the spawn point (will do the same in Square Drop)

As usual I'm posting the updated code:

SquareClass:

ObstacleClass:

ObstacleGeneratorClass:

InputClass:

GUIClass:

Polishing Square Drop

This week I've been working on Square Drop, and here are the things I've improved:

• The code for the platforms spawning has been improved so that a new platform spawns when the previous one is in a certain y position, as opposed to when it gets destroyed as it used to be. The distance between the platforms should be more equal now than what it used to be
• Added a highscore
• Added a restart button
• Used a skin to allign the score text so that it stays in the middle no matter how big the number is
• Used a skin to allign the score in the right hand corner of the screen, and made the font smaller than the actual score so that player's eyes are focused on their score
• Removed the gap and sensor objects attached to the platform, as they were redundandly taking up space and instead coded the game in a more reliable way without using them

There were possibly some more tweak ups I have done but forgot to note down, but nevertheless the most important ones I have mentioned.

Here are the screenshots of the updated code:

SquareClass:

PlatformClass:

PlatformSpawnClass:

GUIClass:

ClickClass: