Behind the Masters

The Final Stretch

I made a mistake. I kept putting off creating the presentation until this week, despite the conference being this week. Before this week, I had worked a little bit on the presentation however not that much. So, on Monday (8th Dec) I spent the entire day almost over 8 maybe 9 hours trying to get the presentation ready for Tuesday, which was when the conference was. I had it almost complete by the end of Monday.

Then on Tuesday (9th Dec), we had our presentation conference, each student went through and talked about their presentation, mine was however at 3.30 which was great, as it gave me pretty much the entire day to finalise and flush out the presentation. Which allowed me to present and deliver a finished presentation as opposed to presenting a half finished presentation.

On Wednesday (10th), they hosted a presentation for those within their 2nd and 3rd modules, however I was unable to attend so I’ve no clue of what occurred and I doubt the job.

The rest of the week was spent finalising the MPP, Poster, and these here learning journals. I had the MPP completed by the end of Wednesday and the Poster was done by the end of Thursday alongside these Journals.

FEEDBACK!

During this week, I sent my MPP and Abstract off to Professor X and my Learning Supervisor for feedback, I received feedback from John the same day, and I instantly started sifting through his feedback working on them one by one.

The Meetings

On Tuesday I wrote up a short pitch presentation for Wednesday's lecture. I ensured it was brief, and yet interesting, and it was around 3 maybe 4 sentences longer ensuring that it was below a minute. On that WednesdayI believe it was timed at roughly 30 seconds which I thought was lovely.

During Wednesday's lecture we had the pitch presentation. Everyone did a short 1 to 5 minute presentation pitching our initial concept for the project, small insights into the development and writing aspects. Nothing crazy, but still interesting to actually see.

The Meetings

During Wednesday's lecture, John outlined and explained some research presentation skills. Which helps us prepare for our upcoming 20 minute presentations on week 13. He outlines that clear and concise speaking is essential, as well as pauses throughout to allow the audience to catch up and acknowledge what was just said. The presentation must also contain almost everything to do with the project..

The Presentation

After Professor X's presentation explaining the necessary skills required for performing a presentation, it had me worried and panicked as I had forgotten about the presentation, and I mine was no where near ready. I had begun work on it before, but only a dabble I didn't work on it for long. But now I need to bunker down and get this presentationr ready.

The Meetings

During Wednesday, Professor X spent the majority of the time this week discussing the next module, module 2, the module where we focus on professional development. Professor X briefly outlined the portfolio brief for module 2.

The Meetings

During Wednesday's lecture Professor X describes how to cite, reference and create a bibliography. I will not lie, when I circled back round to the methodology and the annotated bibliography I had forgotten about citing my text.

Another meeting with Firdaus, my advisor. I mentioned the situation with Unity, which to be fair, I should have mentioned sooner. He reviewed more of my work, gave pointers towards the MPP, and presentation, I think he also reviewed the abstract.

The Meetings

During Wednesday, Professor X displayed learning journal examples. Sadly though, I haven’t a single clue as to a way I can better design my learning journals. Hopefully next trimester, I’ll have a better outline and understanding of learning journal layouts to which would be best for my journal.

The Project

As for work done this week, I started working on the project breakdown and timeline. Still not finalised the methodology, or annotated bibliography though. I just wanted to work on something new, for the time being. Change it up and everything ya know. I outlined a timeline for the next few modules.

The Meetings

This weeks scheduled lecture Professor X continued last weeks discussions by further explaining theoretcal perspectives and methodologies. He outlined what Quantitative and Qualitative research is and that you can merge them, he also went over a few extra ones incase people wanted to explore them.

This week I also had another discussion with Firdaus, we discussed more regarding the game project itself, and he reviewed some of my research and gave pointers regarding both.

Writing Drama

As for work done this week, I began working on my methodologies and annotated bibliography, as these are the largest of sections and I knew that they would take several weeks to actually complete and I also continued writing my methodologies and annotated bibliography for the MPP. However, towards the end of this week my computer decided to bug out, so I performed a factory reset deleting all data, including Unity hub and the editor. After the factory reset, I did attempt to re-install the unity hub and editor, the hub installed no issues. However, the unity editor doesn’t appear to want to install.. So, until this gets fixed I won’t be able to progress further on the physical project which is okay I suppose, it allows me to further focus on the written element of the project.

The Meetings

During Wednesday's webinar, Professor X discussed and explained what paradigms are and the different forms of paradigns, these are as follows;

• Positivism
• Interpretivism
• Constructivism
• Transformativism
• Pragmatism

Physical Project

I did a little more work on the physical project this week as there was a small bug with the time-slow effect, so I fixed that. Then I implemented the enemy movement and began world building by utilising grey boxing, then I implemented the player walk animations.

The Meetings

On Monday, I had a meeting with my learning supervisor to discuss the project, my aims and intentions, what I hoped to do and get out of the course. The meeting went well, we discussed the project and my intentions, I explained that I wanted to make a game in Unreal Engine, and that I wanted to focus on learning the engine and its capabilities. We also discussed potential ideas for the project, and I explained that I wanted to make a survival game with all survival mechanics and systems such as; hunger, thirst, stamina, health, crafting, building and more. He seemed to like the idea, but thought it might be a bit ambitious for the time frame, especially considering I have no experience with Unreal Engine. He proposed a new concept, a simpler one, one which seemed quite fun also.

On Wednesday, I had a meeting with my lecturer 'Professor X', as I had renamed him. He hosted a lecture where he discussed in extreme detail, the portfolio bnrief. He explained each requirement, and even displayed some examples for each on screen. He outlines them in order, the order is as follows;

• Abstract

  A 200 to 300 word summary of the MPP as an entirety

• Conference Presentation

  A 20-minute presentation with 10-minute questions, hosted on December 8th.

• Research Poster

  A visual representation of the abstract, with limited words.

• Major Project Proposal (MPP)

  A 6000 word document presenting the project concept & plan, and the research to support it.

• Learning Journals

  6 entries minimum requirement, with roughly 1800 words across all 6.

My Epiphany

Towards the end of the week I had my eurika moment and thought of a brilliant idea, well for me at the time I thought it was magnificent. Anyways, I thought what if the world was in a state of collapse, or the beginning of a downward spiral which inevitbly is bringing the world to a it's end. And so I thought of a war of the world, where each race, faction and congregation joined in the fight and the world became a mass warzone, but one man wanted it to stop as they realised the world was on the brink of collapse, and they wanted to save it. So they went on a journey to find a way to stop the war, and save the world.

The Concept

The game concept is a fantasy-style action adventure, where the protagonist embarks on a journey to save the world from destruction by it's inhabitants. It is a world-wide race war where majority of the races formed a unity council, which is called the "Phoenix Order", and their sole purpose is wiping out the human race, unbeknowst to them this would inevitably bring on the downfall of time.