This blog post will explain the highlights of my Gameplay and Interactivity submission, including my thoughts on how it went. I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment and plan on improving this piece in the future. In this assignment we had to create a level segment of a game which had roughly 2 minutes worth of gameplay. The level had to be a grey box design and it had to be coded and animated.
Pre-Production:
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| This is the one sheet of my game. It explains the game as an overall and is how I started the project. |
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| This is the storyboard for my game, it shows 4 main milestones in the game that I plan on adding for the 2 minute's of gameplay. I hope that I can add all these event's to the game up to opening the locked door. |
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The above an below images are a plan view which I used when creating the
pirate ship in Maya. I didn't have enough time to add the second floor which
is the image below. These act as maps for the level. |
Coding:
I've checked through all of my code, using techniques that I've been taught in class. Coding was difficult, the concept was hard to grasp but I really tried and it worked out pretty well for the 2 minutes of gameplay I needed.
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This is the script for the story of my game. It's only a few lines of dialogue
but I feel that no more is needed for a game of 2 minutes. I kept the
dialogue separated by short time intervals, there's enough time to read it
but it's not too long that the characters speech seems unrealistically
long. |
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| The code above is to make sure that the mouse is centered during the game. |
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This piece of code does multiple things:
- When near the key will change it's colour to red.
- When your mouse is over the key red text appears saying "I am a key".
- When clicked you will pick up the key.
- When you pick up the key you will be able to walk through a door.
This was probably the most difficult piece of coding I completed in my
opinion. I felt it helped me to develop my skills.
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This is the first door rotation code, this code rotates the door around
a pivot in the direction specified. It detects when the player is near
and rotates it so that the door opens away from the player. I had
problems with this code originally because It would not rotate in the right
direction. I fixed this by changing the transform direction.
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This is the another door rotation script, it's very similar to
the previous except the rotation direction needed to be opposite
this is because the doors world position. |
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| The code above affects a telescope at the front of the ship, it floats up and down with this script. I would make this a pick-up if the game was longer than 2 minutes. |
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This is the global script, it means than when the game starts you
can't open the door that needs the key. When you pickup the key
in the key script it changes this value to true, therefore
allowing you to walk through the door.
The Visual Side: |
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| This is a view of the unity editor and my game. Showing the Hierarchy and Project tabs. |
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This is a full view of the grey box pirate ship that I created in Maya
which I exported into unity (which is being viewed now). I tried to get
the sails to move and be realistically animated with the nCloth tool in Maya.
I set up turbine systems with air to realistically recreate the effect of wind on
a sail. However this could not be transferred over to unity which just left
them flat. I managed to create a large proportion of the ships body but
did not have time to add furniture, however for a grey box level you can still
experience how the level will look roughly. |
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| This is a view while in the game. The pirate ship moves and sways on the moving sea. I create the illusion of the ship moving forward by animating the rocks I created in the distance. These rocks move past the ship slowly. In the level there is fog, this fog doesn't allow you to see the end of the ocean or all of the rocks. This means that my rocks can be played on a loop without it being noticeable. The random arrangement makes it difficult to recognise them as being the same group of rocks. |
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This is another view in the game showing what the ship looks like on the deck.
It also shows other features I added like the lights. |
In conclusion I am happy with how my 2 minute game turned out. I encountered quite a few problems along the way with coding and aesthetic features such as the sails. I feel that I overcame these limitations to a reasonable standard, fixing code and making the 2 minute game work. I felt my game concept is very different to most peoples. The main difference was that my level is vehicle, it moves and sways. This created limitations in how large my level could be, it also made problems which then had to be resolved but I don't regret choosing this idea. I had to make sure everything on the ship was grouped together, if I hadn't then some objects wouldn't of have rotated and moved with the rest of the ship. I also had a problem where the player would fall through the ship.
But every problem I encountered helped me to develop, it taught me how to solve these problems and get the best solutions. This unit helped me grow as a game developer, learning new skills while giving me experience. This was beneficial in my growth and I also enjoyed the experience.
