Towards the end of last semester, we discussed some areas that you as a group would like to develop and I’m delighted that I have been able to create a plan and find resources to meet those suggestions. Before we begin lets use the padlet to help reflect on semester 1.
Reading and Writing
In relation to researching and academic writing, you asked for some workshops on this in order to develop your skills to the level of writing a Literature Review. While developing this portion of the module I came across a writing resource that mirrors many of the approaches I use in developing these skills, but I believe that they present them in a more structured manner. So I have taken elements from this and combined with my approach I think we have a pretty comprehensive writing plan for the semester.
I’m aware that some of you wonder about the relevance of having to learn how to write in a formal, academic manner, this page sets out some of the reasons why it’s important. In addition, I suppose the positive reasons may be obvious for those that might pursue a post-grad but even those of you hoping to pursue a more artistic angle for a career maybe relying on submitting applications for shows, grant applications, and funding. These next few weeks will hopefully build your confidence in conducting desk research and improving your writing skills.
I have also been working on how I might make this writing project more relevant to you! In the hope to make this work live past this module, I am suggesting that the topics we all write about connect and form one coherent publication, I’m suggesting that we create an open-source academic textbook title Game Design and Development. If everyone is open to the idea I’m willing to work in conjunction with you to see if we can publish this book at the end of the semester, for most of you will be your first peer-reviewed academic publication to add to your CV! not bad for 2nd year!
Tutorials
For Unity, there are two paths, a beginner path in 2D game development that will begin to help with coding your own project which is perfect if you want to re-enforce the learning that took place during semester 1, and an intermediate path for those of you who enjoyed the challenge of the last semester and would like to further explore XR technologies and Unity. Please look through both paths before you start as you need to commit to one. If you are unsure complete both paths for a week and re-evaluate. As you will have noticed there is a 3rd path, an E-learning project – this is a self-selected & designed project and should not be seen as the easy option. It will require careful selection and though both in terms of content and software selection and will largely be self-directed.
2D Game Dev
A series of tutorials for 2D Unity Development,
Ruby’s Adventure: 2D Beginner
These tutorials will take approximately 14 hours (weeks 2-7) from week 8 it is expected that you will create your own 2D game.
Introduction to XR
A series of tutorials for developing a VR project (headgear not required) The first set of tutorials will take approximately 14 hours, you will then make an XR project of your own!
https://learn.unity.com/course/introduction-to-xr-vr-ar-and-mr-foundations
https://learn.unity.com/project/vr-in-unity-a-beginner-s-guide?uv=
E-learning Project
Choose suitable software to produce a multimedia project. This will consist of working on a complete project from initial brainstorming to design, development, and testing to a high standard. These projects are self-directed and will need to be approved in advance.me.
Questions for 1st day of Semester
Question 1: Do you want to do work over the Easter reading weeks?
Question 2: How best to organise our Thursday? I will be available each Thursday for all sessions but do you have thoughts on how best to use that time? do we need to meet F2F every week or are there weeks that you would benefit working from in groups or on your own? Should we split ourselves into smaller teams when working on our writing?
Secondly, a task that I would like everyone to contribute to on Thursday morning 10:00 – 12:00 is the creation of an outline for the proposed book “Game Design and Development”, I have begun this task and will help you further develop this over the coming weeks. As a group, we can decide on Chapters and maybe some sections, and then we can choose which part we would like to work on. The tasks for this will be individual but like so much of our work, we will be supporting each other through our feedback.
