Unit 12 - Evaluation

This is the first unit I have done the unit evaluation on my blog and probably the last. Usually we have sketchbooks to work in, however, this time I have produced a small folder and all of the blog entries you see here.

I've never really taken to the whole blogging thing as I find it hard to update it regularly and usually end up typing all of my previously planned entries at once. I much prefer working in sketchbooks as I can lay them out as I see fit, and there's a sense of urgency about completing them that I just don't get with blogs.

Even so, I have learned a great deal about working from them. At times they are very convenient since you can quickly say what's on your mind without worrying about filling up the page (by which point you probably forgot what you planned on writing).

This was definitely the unit I had the most difficulty in doing. Unit 7 & 12 were supposed to run alongside each other, however, unit 7 started later than planned. This meant that unit 12 didn't seem to have any real purpose at first.
On top of this the entire unit was based around research and consisted mainly of written documents with the odd slideshow. I had a lot of difficulty getting motivated to get the work done.

We started off with Company Structures and Roles & Responsibilities. Using the project brief. This involved us looking for information about a company of our choice's development structures. As stated in my earlier blog entry I chose CAPCOM (view previous entry for details). This part was quite simple because of the quality of CAPCOM's corporate site.
The Roles & Responsibilities section was a different story. To get the information required I needed to look through several different websites.

The Project Management task we were asked to do was a little bit more interesting because we needed to create slideshow to show our understanding of it. As an additional part we needed to look at how project management was applied to a game title of our choice. This was slightly different from what the original brief stated, but provided me with some nice looking slides. It was this that prompted me to look for tutorials covering Flash slideshows, to enable me to integrate it into my own site as the unit 7 brief required.

Having been in the workplace for a number of years prior to this course I already had an understanding of Project Management, Contractual, Legal & Ethical Obligations, which made these tasks very tedious. At the same time I can understand the importance of them, and can now see how they apply to the games industry.

Throughout the unit I have been working on my own development planner detailing what I have learnt during the course of the project in terms of software knowledge. It is good to see how I am progressing and reminds me of what I have achieved so far.

This is my last blog entry for this unit. But before I finish off I should give an overall view of what the unit has been like. Though I found producing the content difficult, it has been completed and used on my now finished website. The length and style of some of the content has forced me to research the different software platforms I planned on using and changed my initial approach to the website unit to what it is now.

Design Plans

This will be the last entry based on the design of the site. I have included two images below showing my initial ideas and the progression from them.

These didn't take long to produce. After talking as a group with the course tutor I had a good idea of what I should and shouldn't do on my site.

Website Map

This is a map for my website. Originally created in MS Word, I used this when creating the layout for the site in Photoshop. I made this so that I would know how many buttons I would need for links etc, however, I still managed to forget the Ethics page right up until I was ready to create it. I decided to put the content on the Home Page instead.

The Website

I thought I would show you what my website looks like (see image below).

This is the links page, but all of the pages have roughly the same layout. All of the buttons have a rollover effect and link to another page, website or content. I will be including design scans in the next entry to show the layout.

Contractual, Legal & Ethical Obligations

I mentioned this piece of work in one of my previous entries, and it's one I really wasn't looking forward to. This document involved a lot of research and a lot of typing to answer the questions set out in the brief.

We watched a couple of videos on the Ethics involved in recent video games and how they influence the people playing them.

Link to video

The video shown above claimed to be a scientific study to determine whether violent video games influence children in a negative way. To me it seemed to be condeming them from the start and had already made the decision before hand. It was painful to watch, but forms part of my research for this task.

I also looked at the BECTU website to help with the contractual side of the task. For some of the specifics I used several sources including experience from my previous job (holiday, health & safety).

I visited the BBFC and PEGI websites to get information on the legal side of things.

Development Planner

I decided shortly after my previous entry that I wanted to use Flash for the main content area on my site. Flash gives me more freedom with visuals than Dreamweaver does.

Moving on, I have created a planner in MS Excel to help me organise my own work and learning. Having done planning during one of the previous units, I decided to apply what I had learnt to these units.

Using the previous unit's planner as a template I created a new one with content to suit the current work.

I have also added a sheet to help me keep track of what I had to learn.