#myowngame

Problem: How can I implement sounds for coins and other pickup items in Spacenture in order to make the game more interesting?

The goal when solving this problem is can apply the knowledge from the sound design assignments and from the internet to play a sound when pickup items in Unity.

How did I solve this?

I take a look on the internet to see how can I implement sounds for pickups

Use Audacity to add reverb to the source sounds (to make it more "space" vibe)

Implemented all stuff in Unity prototype and then showed it to my peer!

DOT Framework Used:

RESOURCES:

Coin Pickups Sound:

How to make Audio louder?

How do i make the audio louder? - Unity Answers

Reverb - Audacity Manual:

Reverb - Audacity Manual (audacityteam.org)

PRODUCT:

Adding reverb effect:

Before:

After:

Pickups sound: (I just can upload only 1 video due to Tumblr limitation)

Link to our game on itch.io:

Spacenture by Fontys Game Design & Technology, Peterlajos, leecamm (itch.io)

Quality of the result:

The first time, the sounds were too small even I set them to maximum volume. So I looked for solutions in the Unity forum and applied that into the game:

These adjustments for the camera made the sound nearer the camera so it made the sound louder.

NEXT:

Problem: How can I make the attacking mechanic which is Jump to Kill in order to let players have the option to kill enemies even they don't have shooting power?

When starting a game, the player can't shoot until they collect 4 shooting parts fully. So they have only one way to kill the enemies - jumping on their head!

How did I solve this?

I've got inspired by the Mario game mechanics, I played it several times to find out what they may use in their game.

Looking for a tutorial on the internet.

Looking for solutions in the Unity community.

Implementing what I've found and then playtest with my peer.

DOT Frameworks used:

RESOURCES:

PRODUCTS:

After implementing, I got a small bug that the enemy will be changed the position before falling down, so we decided to make the enemies disappear when players jump on them.

Quality of the result:

Everything is working well, but player needs to be careful because sometimes, if he jumps but not in the center of the enemy, he can lose health.

NEXT:

Problems: How can I created a Main Menu, Lose and Win Screen for Spacenture?

With the main menu and other screens, the player can navigate the game easily, it also contains some useful information for the player. After solving this problem, I will have more knowledge and experience when working with Unity UI.

How did I solve this?

For this problem, I've got inspired by the UI mood board we created before.

Take a look at the Unity UI tutorial for making a menu and panels.

Validated and playtest with my peer to see if everything work or not.

DOT Frameworks used:

RESOURCES:

UI Moodboard:

Start Menu tutorial:

Unity Documentations:

Unity UI Buttons

PRODUCT:

After researching and implementing all stuff that is needed, our game now has a main menu and other screens which can interact with

Main menu:

Instruction for player:

Game Over screen:

Winning Screen: which also shows how many coins did the player have after play the game.

Quality of the results:

Everything seems to work pretty well, but after doing some testing, we found out some problems:

When clicking the "Play Again" or "Restart" button, the coin counter, bullet parts, and speed star are not reset to 0, they are keep counting, so we need to add some line in the menu scripts.

Because Tumblr limit number of the photo uploaded to 10 so I will post some lines of code here:

public void RestartGame()

{

SceneManager.LoadScene(1);

CoinTextScript.coinAmount = 0; //Reset coin counter

SpeedStarTextScript.starAmount = 0; //Reset Speedstar counter

CounterForShootingParts.collectedPartsAmount = 0; //Reset shooting part counter (or player can shoot even without any parts)

Time.timeScale = 1f;

}

NEXT:

The goal of this challenge is in the end I want to have a health indicator on the top right of the HUD. It also can show the remaining lives of the player and lost when he is attacked by the enemies or falls down of the platform.

How did I solve this?

I searched for the tutorial about health bar/heart in Unity.

Using what I found on Google, Youtube and then implement it in my game!

Brainstorm to find out what needs to be improved.

Discussing with my peer.

DOT Frameworks used:

RESOURCES:

PRODUCTS:

In the end, the player now can see how many lives they have. The hearts will be lost after the player is attacked by the enemies.

Unity prototype results:

QUALITY OF THE RESULT:

The health system is working good for now! I used the arrays of health hearts so in the future we can change the number of character's lives!

NEXT:

METHODS USED:

I looked for tutorials and found a 2D camera follow using Cinemachine. And then I applied it into my game with some customizes.

PRODUCT:

RESOURCES:

GOAL:

Update the 10page GDD with more contents and details:

Kind of fun (update)

Story (brief)

Theme/Mood

Boundaries & Setting

Game world

METHODS USED:

We conducted a meeting to decide some changes in our GDD based on the teacher's slide. Otherwise, I also looked for some information on the Internet to make the GDD more detailed and correct.

PRODUCT:

First, we decided to change our game's name from IndieVisual to Spacenture - which sounds more suitable for it.

We came up with the game styles:

For more details, please click the link leads to the 10 page GDD.

RESOURCES:

Gamasutra - Defining Boundaries: Creating Credible Obstacles In Games

Your Own Game Week 5: GDT4-CMK (instructure.com)

METHODS USED:

We created a mood board to express the game aesthetic in a more attractive way. I was thinking about which game should suitable for our game and looked for some inspirations on Pinterest and Google Images. And then I sent my groupmate the photos and he put them into a final mood board.

PRODUCT:

Moodboard 1: “general” art direction

Moodboard 2 (or more): “functional” art direction

RESOURCES:

Aesthetic Driven Development: Choosing Your Art Before Making a Game - YouTube

Pinterest

METHODS USED:

We take a look at our core mechanics and then try to structure and see which ones are more important than others. Which one that we can keep, ditch and change.

PRODUCT:

Finally we decided to keep, ditch and change these things:

Keeping the MOVEMENT

We were thinking about which makes the game playable and without it it will be a mess (based on the genre of the game). In a platformer, adventure game, one of the most important part is the movement, that's why we are going to keep it. It is also pretty easy to do. For us it will contain: jumping around the levels from platform to platform, walking and sneaking - those are the things which we will never remove from our game.

Ditching / Throwing out the BREAKING PLATFORMS BY USING W+S

Our original idea was, that there will be platforms on the map, which will be breakable by the player. If the player jumps on it and presses Crouch/Sneak in mid-air, they can break a platform under themselves. We completely removed that function/mechanic, because we think it will be hard to implement, because of using 2 buttons at the same time - it can cause delays, bugs in the animations and in the movement itself. Also, we have self-breaking platforms in the game which will break after the player stays on them for 3-5 seconds, so we thought two breaking platform option will be much.

Changing the POWER-UPS

There are some power-ups in our game which changes the gameplay a little bit. All of them are pickups, which the player can get from the levels, and it gives them extra's such as speed and shooting power. We changed the time of the effect, because in the begging we made them too long (from 1-1.30 min to 10-15 sec), which made the gameplay not challenging and easy at the same time.

RESOURCES:

Week 4 slide: