Cognitive Flow: The Psychology of Great Game Design

In order for a game to create a cognitive flow you need to put some things together. First off you need a good balance of; 
When you're playing a game and its too easy you will easily get bored of it, specially if its a single player game and when its too hard you will get anxious and frustrated because you cant progress.


The games which had a good cognitive flow for me atleast are as follows;

1.  League Of Legends, I spent countless amounts of hours playing this game and im still going, one thing that definitely keeps me playing this game is the competitive aspect of it. Over the years I have grown to be in the top percentage of players on the server which has the most players on it. 
2. GTA San Andreas /GTA 5. Growing up as a kid I spent enormous amount of time playing parts from the Grand Theft Auto series. I really liked what GTA offered and it kept me playing for hours.
3. Need for Speed (from the 1st underground up till carbon); Back in the day my and my cousin loved racing games and the aspect of being able to customize your car, get chased by cops and drive freely around the map

Today i was carrying on with creating my map. I started working on it at home. It is starting to take shape and im happy with the progress of it.

How to upload files to github

1.  Create a new folder and name it
2. inside that folder create a new folder called css and js
3. drag the folder you created in step 1 into subline
4. once in subline go into the css folder and create a new file, click save as and name it 'style'
5.  go onto the js folder and  create a new file, call it 'index.js' and save it
6. create another file and name it 'index.html'
7. 
   

Come up with 3 clear goals or tasks your player will need to achieve in your game demo.

1. number one goal will be for the player to test my checkpoint system, try and complete the race and maybe even have a go at beating the best lap/race record!
2. Number two goal will be for the player to test the functions of my game like the restart system whenever your car flips on its roof after 4 seconds the car will be teleported back on its wheels at the last checkpoint. The player will also need to have a go at trying to flip the car over which is rather difficult!
3. Number three goal/task for the player will be to just play the game and see how it feels, is it smooth, does it have a nice flow to it, how does it drive, is it different on the road then on the rocks?

Creating houses!!

In today's lesson i started on creation of houses for my game, I m really close to finishing this one, it just needs some texture to be put onto it. So far the creation of it has taken me about 3:30h and i still have a bit to go. Below is a video which i am using to create this house. I am currently 2/3 through the video so i would say that about 1 more hour of work and the house will be complete.










https://youtu.be/TMnfeV2KRGU?t=1706

Week by week timeline for my game project.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d3AhNx-Yq0rgRu7MZ3sy940wJelyVOfmaEahjIjbKwk/edit#gid=1816343427

the document goes a little bit weird as all the days are shown as '#NAME?' id be better off printing it out from my memory stick if possible!

What will motivate the player in my game?
Starting from the bottom all the way through the top to become the best there ever was and have tons of fun and also maintaining a great experience playing the game

What will be the challenges the player will undertake while playing my game?
Different race types, different cars, starting small with a low end car to progressing and upgrading to high end cars, time trials, laps, sprints, escaping the cops, racing other players (bots) during free roam.

What will be the rewards in my game?
The rewards in my game will be as following: cash rewards, chance to win the bosses car which will have custom parts which cannot be bought in the shop. Only obtainable through winning it.

Player Profile

Sources;

(so you're able to access them) 

http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/2013-gamers-survey-results-demographics-platforms-and-smartphone-use/

http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ESA-Essential-Facts-2015.pdf

http://essentialfacts.theesa.com/Essential-Facts-2016.pdf

Controls for my game

So i decided to get rid of the grid system as i realized it will be a failure, instead i decided to use the spline tool to create my roads, its way faster and easier to do it that way. I've put my texture onto the road mesh which was already within the engine and used it for the spline tool, I am really happy with the outcome just need to fix a couple of things, also 3ds max on my computer is broken and whenever i access it it just kicks me out. 

Prototyping my website.

In todays lesson i was asked to pick a website template of my own choice. I went with a parallax effect. I changed the background image to the one taken from the game I'm creating and I also wrote something about my game, not too much as it was mostly about changing the visual effects of the website. Furthermore i have changed some of the colors on the website.
Below you will be able to see how the original one looked like.

Presenation:

here is a sketch i did however i felt like this was pointless and i anotated a parallax effect in powerpoint as you can see above

http://www.awwwards.com/20-best-web-fonts-from-google-web-fonts-and-font-face.html

Minumum system requirements

What are the advantages of producing a game for high specs PC?

• You will be able to make your game with really fancy graphics and other features that an old PC wont be able to run.
• 
  

What are the disadvantages of producing a game for high specs PC?

• You might not get a higher player base to try out/play your game as not everybody can afford a high end/gaming PC.

Advantages of UE4

Nice Graphics Quality, you can make games for multiple platforms.

User-Friendly Interface, very easy to learn for beginners.

Disadvantages of UE4

• Performance can be rather unstable at times.

Inspirations for my website

Todays lesson wants me to search for web animation and get inspired by it to create my own website .



The GIF you can see to the left is basically a transition from this website i found. I really liked it and felt like its just so smooth and fast. this is the website http://www.species-in-pieces.com/# , the website was made by 'Bryan James' (his twitter https://twitter.com/WengersToyBus )
The animations were made in CSS below will be a picture of what Bryan wrote about making the web animation.

Another 'animation' i found was on the angry birds website. They have recently released a new version/edition of their game. The thing you can see above this writing is basically a short game play video thats on loop and will play forever or until you leave the site. They have included a different variety of clips from different levels which makes the video not look as if its looping.

I believe that the website as a whole was made with CSS. There actually isn't any animation on the website apart from video playing in the background at a certain part. The website and animation/game as a whole was mady by 'Ravio' Link to the website: https://www.angrybirds.com/games/angry-birds-space/?ref=space.angrybirds.com 

I really loved this 'scroller' parallax effect animation i found on the internet. I feel like it would be the perfect animation to use for my website. The animation just felt so smooth while i was scrolling through it it was in Brazilian so i wasn't really able to understand what it read but it was really impressing. I think that this animation/website was made using CSS, it was created by a company/organisation named 'CCR'. Link to the website: http://www.grupoccr.com.br/10anosipo/ . Honestly I would really consider using something similar for my website.

Once again i have found a 'parallax effect scroller' as i believe this is what i want my website to be. This scroller is a timeline map through the whole of California coast, I found this website really infomational and enjoyable not only because i liked the parallax effect but also because it had loads of information within it aswell, i wont talk about it too much as this isnt the point of this exercise. The link to the website is the following; http://www.exsus.com/highway-one-roadtrip . It was made in CSS by the travel company named 'EXSUS'

Starting on the creation of my map.

Today was all about me trying to import my road texture into UE4 and apply it to the road i tried making which failed and succeeded at the same time. The bad part was that the engine and the PC crashed twice causing me to restart and that the texture applies to the object(road) in the different direction so when i create the road the texture applies side ways.The good one was that I managed to create the road its short for now but it will be longer and I was also able to ride on the road.

Today i was able to create the road, i somehow managed to make it a sprite, it was aactually accidental but i was really happy when it worked out, in the next lesson i will be fianlly able to start on making roads for the map, i will also look into making building 

I was able to resize the size of the road using photoshop and then importing it into ue4 however the texture lost a lot of quality, So i decided to resize it in ue4 and it worked out!! however i only figured that out at the end of the session. So now i can have a more accurate road while keeping the same quality 

in blue i have highlited the original texture i have made which was 4096x4096 i changed the x value from 1 to 0.5 and now its perfect. I was also trying to make the car bigger so it fits better on the road however whenever i resized it to bigger the collision did not match and half the wheels were inside the road (aannnnnnd the engine crashed will finish this off next lesson ) i also made a building!

Today i was able to create a layout for my game its a grid based layout that is pretty huge. I decided to create that so i have a rough shape of what i want my map to look like and i can just change it whenever i want to. I will have to create a separate texture for a junction so i can connect all the roads together and make the road/texture look nice.

I also created this little town and added textures onto the shapes i made so now they look like buildings. I've also added some trees a hydrant,mail box, bus stop. Now when i run the game its starting to look really nice and i like it so far! However judging at how big this map is i might have to make it smaller or it might take a little longer to fill it up than i expected.

I was generating ideas for what to put into my map and how i want it to look like i tried doing some visual work but unfortunatelly my engine crashed towards the end of the lesson and i did not save through the day, which meant i lost the work i was doing today which honestly wasn't much as i was mostly looking on the internet trying to learn more about creating maps and buildings and other assets. i found this one indie game thats a bit similar to what I want to make, here is a link to a gameplay video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RNSgbST3DM .

Monday, today i was looking into the spline tool as i realized that the grid system on the whole of the map will be a failure. I was able to create roads freely with the spline tool however i was not able to put my texture on it and make it look as i want it to. Toward the end of the lesson i realized that it might be because my road which i want to use as the texture isn't a static mesh but a sprite. hence why when i put it on it was not showing up properly  when i ran the game. I was also able to create a spline component, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJyWSzfwEk8 basically this as i wanted to try and see if i can make my roads that way, well it was then, i realized that my object isn't a static mesh, i tied it with different static meshes and it worked. Next session/or at home i will make my static mesh in 3ds max with the texture already on it and then try the spline tool again to see if i am able to create the road with the texture looking flawlessly.

Creating visual assets for my game.

Today I was able to create a road texture for my game.
i will write more later as i have ran out of time due to my computer being super slow

In order to make the road texture i started out with a asphalt texture i went with this one:

I created a new photoshop document 4096x4096 and filled the whole document with the asphalt texture. I started out with a small rectangle so the texture looks as high quality as possible then I started to duplicate the rectangles and eventually they covered up the whole document.

in order to create the yellow line i went onto google images just like previously i did with the asphalt texture and i looked for the image i liked the most i downloaded it, opened in photoshop cut out the yellow line and then pasted it into my main document. I then resized it and started to line it up on my asphalt

i chose this picture for the white line. the process is the same as for the yellow line so i wont explain it again.

Here is how my texture looks at this moment. as you can see its starting to look like a road now.

 I then go onto mess around with the exposure so the road looks lighter.

I then went ahead and added some texture onto the side of the road right where the white line is to make it look liked its a bit old/used in a sense.

The last thing i did was add those marks after someone broke hard on their brakes, in the previous version of my texture road this looked way better than this one look like now and I think i will get rid of it completely since i couldn't make it look the same as in the 1st version.

Actually i was able to make it look a a lot better. 

Here you can see how the final design looks like! 

Audio in my game.

The main audio in my game will be the car engine sounds. I also want to have audio when you're in the menu scrolling through the options. Since my game is an open world game I also thought about adding a radio system that will allow you to choose a certain radio station or just have it turned off. Furthermore i want to make it so when you get close to an AI car (not the one you will be racing with but the cars that will be on the street as obstacles.) it will blow its horn at you, the player will also be able to use the horn when pressing a certain button. Whenever you crash into something there will also be a sound played, when you pull the breaks.

Ambient sound = Background noise.

The ambient sound that i could use in my game would be; car engine noises, wind blows, radio music, level music,

Alert sound = Sounds that notify you of something

The alert sound that i could use in my game would be; checkpoint sound

U.I sound = User Interface sounds

The U.I sounds which i could use in my game would be the following, while scrolling through the menu and placing your mouse on one of the options/ selecting one a sound will be played.

example of a sound which i have made and used in my game. This sound will be used to indicate that a player has passed a checkpoint.
https://soundcloud.com/hi-im-bachis/checkpoint-sound-2-1

Example of a second sound in my game which I am using is the following; a level sound which will be played when the game is launched. I got it from the internet.

https://soundcloud.com/hi-im-bachis/realisticrender-musicday02

Practicing UE4

Today after Jez gave me and a couple of other students a good tutorial on UE4 i went into the advanced physics car template and messed around with it. I made the map slightly bigger and also added collision onto it. I was also able to change the camera of the car so now its slightly further and higher than it previously was.

In todays lesson i was able to expand on my tack also add a couple of ramps, one of them is really hard to land!

This lesson i was carrying on with my track, i was able to finish it. I also deleted the whole platform underneath it so now if you go off the track you will just foll off the game, So far i was not able to complete the track once duo to the car as whenever you dont land right from the ramp your car will end up spazzing out and foll off the track meaning you have to restart the game. In the future lessons i will look into creating a restart point after pressing a certain button.

Psychology behind colors

Find about the psychology behind these colors:

Red; Red is also a physical color. It energizing. The color red is the color of energy, passion and action

Positive:  Physical courage, strength, warmth, energy,
Negative: Defiance, aggression,

Blue:  Is an intellectual color. The color blue is the color of trust and responsibility
Positive: Intelligence, communication, trust, efficiency, duty, logic, coolness, reflection, calm.
Negative: Coldness, lack of emotion,


Yellow: is an emotional color. The color yellow is the color of the mind and the intellect
Positive: Optimism, confidence, self-esteem, extroversion, emotional strength, friendliness, creativity.  
Negative: Irrationality, fear, emotional fragility, depression, anxiety, suicide.




In my game i will use the following colors for:

Red: I will use the color red in my game to represent enemies, there will of course be a minimap in my game so when you're racing on the map you will be able to see your self in; blue and the enemies in red. Yellow will be used for displaying check points on the map. Im also thinking of joining blue and red together to represent the cops on the mini map. Blue will be used to display the player on the mini map.


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In today's lesson i was able to identify and learn what most popular colors mean and i was also able to decide how i will use them in my game. I also had a look around looking at some different car models, i tried to download them and put them into the engine to see how they work and if they have sound like the ones in real life, just so i could get some ideas about what i want to do. However i was not able to find any downloadable assets.

Website For My Game

My task was to look at web animations, i went onto the mafia 3 website as the game came out just recently to check out if they have some interesting animations/designs on their website. It wasn't anything special but they had something unlike other big name game websites.

I want my website to be the following: when someone goes on the link to it, the first thing they see will be a parallax effect (http://www.franckmaurin.com/blog/the-parallax-effect-with-jquery/) then you will scroll down and see what platforms my game will be available on and also the price, then there will be a trailer for my game below the available platforms. Furthermore a short writing about what My game is about and a couple of screenshots of it below the writing. Something really similar to this website: http://www.firewatchgame.com/
bellow i will show how i imagine my page

as you can see here is my loading screen which i wanted for my website. I done loads of research and was able to find a few of  those but this one caught my interest the most. Its a bit boring for now but as i get better at using html and css i will be able to make it better.