#studio vi

Adding in Details and Fixing Issues

With the game basically completed, I just needed to add extra details and fix up some issues that were a little bit game breaking.

I’ve added in all the areas I’ve gotten from Matt and had him populate the areas with enemies and rubble where he imagined for a complete play area. 

One issue that was really bad was having the laser be an extension of the player, which meant that shooting it in the right places means that the character may end up moving to a different area. I had a little google of this issue, with the best solution to separate the laser from the player, and have a different parent for it which is always in the correct place for the laser to appear. 

Another issue I had was while all the enemies were in place, all of the vine monster’s vines weren’t working the way they should, or at least two of three were not working. Max ended up helping me with this and talking me through the problem which fixed it up.

Matthew created some button prompts to show up to help the player along with controlling the character. I’ve added these to show up when most appropriate. 

Next was getting the camera to shake while the player shoots the laser. Brackeys comes to save the day with his tutorial on this. I also learnt to watch tutorials to completion because they usually go on to explain how to fix things that aren’t quite working right. Again, Max helped me with making the shaking end exactly when it needs to. There was a lot of experimenting with numbers to get the right feel to the camera shake. I added this camera shake to the big door opening as well.

See below these new updates!

I’ve started adding in sounds that Matthew has been working on, however this is a low priority item whilst we get some play testing done. 

Studio VI: Pentagram concepts

One of the puzzles we’re developing involves creating a star shape out of reflected light shafts, so I’m designing a pentagram motif to be applied to the floor. I’m doing my best to avoid any sort of satanic, occult or death metal connotations, thought I suppose it doesn’t help that I’ve got the star inverted. 

For the first two images I went with a theme of chain links, which will echo those that we plan to have on our player character. These two show some promise, however they both look at least a little like the doodles of a death metal obsessed teenager.

The next three I went with a geometric spiral design, which I think works pretty well to create an air of magic without appearing all too occult. Of these, the last is my favourite.

The next two used a more traditional spiral shape in the centre, the second of the two appears more natural than the first with it’s points.

Progress Report

Here’s the progress I’ve made so far. Matthew’s been sending in heaps of art work for me to work with. Firstly, I’ve been sorting out moving between areas. One area in particular needed to have the camera zoom in. The video below shows all of this. I used the same technique I used in my testing scene where the character teleported to the other side of the screen, but also had the camera move position. 

Another aspect I’ve been working on is the laser attack and the UI for the health and the power of the laser. The laser stumped me for a bit, I tried a few different techniques which didn’t quite work. Turns out turning your brain off for a second helps to find a better solution for my problems. I don’t know if this is the best way for it to work, but it works so no complaining from me.

The UI I had to follow this tutorial by Alexander Zotov, just to get the basic idea of how it works. Pretty simple stuff. I probably could adjust a few things so it fills up more smoothly, but those are some minor details.

Reflection

The making of this project has been a lot different than what I’m used to. 

As this was the first time making a game for a Studio project, I left most of the development process to Matthew, as he had done games plenty of times before. The process I usually follow includes a lot of time spent on research and ensuring each design decision was well informed before implementation. However with our focus on environmental storytelling, a lot of what we did needed to be implemented and tested to see if it was successful. That being said, there was research to inform us in a lot of decisions, but not as I’m used to. Although this difference was slightly jarring for me, I feel like learned a lot from working in a different style. I do feel like I would revert back to my normal development process though, as I am more comfortable with my own process.

The chosen goal for our project was something I’ve been wanting to work on, creating a game which communicates its story through game play, such as Journey. I feel we’ve achieved this goal well given the time we had and our small group size of two people. There’s definitely more that could be added, more hints to the hidden narrative or visual stimuli. 

I’ve really enjoyed developing this game, I’ve learned a lot about coding in Unity and it’s great to feel like I have a skill I actually kind of excel in. I definitely still have a lot to learn and would like to challenge myself with a 3D game rather than just 2D. 

Submission

Link to blogs: https://sheenaatbct.tumblr.com/tagged/CTEC709

Final touch ups

After fixing up all the little bugs from playtesting, I fixed up all the sound issues and all the other extra sounds I was given to implement (boss sounds for example).

Next was implementing a new enemy, a tiny little creature which doesn’t do much damage, but helps the player in terms of difficulty progression. 

This was easy enough to do, with the already made code from the other enemies. In fact a lot easier since the enemy just dies after it attacks.

With this done, Matthew and I were able to place the enemies where they needed, and could decide on where new enemies would spawn between each door opening. 

The code for spawning was something I did last semester, so I just referred back to that code for it. The way I did it isn’t the most efficient, there is definitely a better way to do it, however, I don’t have the time to learn something new.

At this point, we’ve done everything we could for presentation. There’s a little bit more that we could do for showcase but right now, we do not have the time. 

Boss and Playtest

Since most of the main part of the game is complete, with only some touch ups needing to be done, I started on the boss fight.

The mechanics for this mostly included things I’ve done previously with last semester’s Game and Play project, so I’ve taken the code from there.

Whilst playing around with this, I felt that the boss’ attack was lacklustre, so I added the mechanic of having the vines chase after the player briefly, rather than just popping up randomly.  I also needed a way to let the player know that the vines were being hit by the laser. For this I changed the colour of the vines to red when the laser is hitting them, which is a common technique used in video games (from personal experience).

Matthew also explained to me about boss battle mechanics, how they increase in difficulty, but also often have a twist which the player must adapt to, for example, the way the boss attacks changes. Unfortunately, we do not have time to implement a twist, but we can do increasing difficulty.

For the increase in difficulty, I’ve had the number of vines increase based on the boss’ health. There is also one of the previous enemies which spawns in the room, again based on the boss’s health.

I had a friend volunteer to play test the game so far, with its new changes.

I noted down all the bugs I noticed from their playthrough which I can quickly fix later on. Some other comments that they had were

Likes that the player can strafe

Enjoys the animated world

The one enemy (Error enemy) is spooky

Likes how the scenes give perspective on the world size

Interactable Environment

From Laurent’s and our playtesters’ feedback, we decided our game would benefit from a more “alive” and interactable world. By having everything so still, it was hard for the player to immerse themselves into the game, and feel as though the game world was alive. Without this, it was more difficult to create a narrative. 

Matthew worked on creating a bunch of animations where he saw fit and sent them over. After implementing them into uni, I immediately noticed how much better it made the game feel. The animations gave the world a bit of life.