Week 22 - Creating Day and Night

One of the key elements in our game is the change between day and night.

Cristian painted both backgrounds so I made two different scenes, day and night, as each level has different parts. I don't have the day version of the enemy and player yet or any sprite sheets so I just used the night sprites and made different prefabs with them.

I prefer the way the nighttime looks so far as it seems more interesting and fun. This scene has two enemies as the werewolf version of the player has higher health and attack.

I used what we learned when making menus to activate different levels. We decided to have a countdown of two minutes between scenes. I added this piece of script but haven't yet figured out how to phase between the two nicely.

Week 20 - Putting the Art into Unity

Cristian roughly painted a few different scenes so that we could choose one we all agreed on and I had painted the potion so went and started assembling everything into Unity.

We decided on this background but with a slightly more purple hues. I hadn't been given any character to use yet so I placed one of the standard asset sprites so I could start sizing things and placing objects where I needed them.

Icons - Boosts

For our game we decided to do some boost items; a potion and some runes. All three of us feel more comfortable with character designing but as the tasks had to be split up we decided that Bryony will do the character sheets, Cristian will do the Backgrounds and I will do the icons and coding.

I like designing objects but as I am only really comfortable with sketches on paper, it was odd to render on Photoshop. We decided on a painterly looking style with pixel art characters so I didn't go into too much detail, though I did want to add beads and other bits however the icon will only be small so there's not really any point anyway.

I desaturated the icon to make a black and white version for when the object has not yet been picked up.

Week 17 - Full Moon Prototype

In the early stages of the game we don't have that much art ready for us to use. I used what we have to begin  build the game as the gameplay should be worked on before the art so that it all fits together nicely.

I used the sketch of the character Bryony drew for both the main and enemy character and put in the background art Cristian drew. I really like how the background looks but we realised it was too short. We could shrink the screen size but instead I asked him to redraw it but more stretched. I also realised that it didn't look like the character is actually on the field. It is too obviously just an image and doesn't work well with the characters. I decided that 2048 * 1080 is a good resolution for the screen and showed Cristian how it needed to be edited to improve it.

Full Moon - Original Concepts

For this term's game, the brief asks for a 2D, one screen (no screen scrolling) game. We were to get into groups of 4-5 though our group only has 3 so we will have to work a little harder.

We decided on a game based on a werewolf from a tribe as there are a few similar legends.

We made a quick paper prototype to present and help it come together in our minds. As we each have to make at least one art asset and one script, we also assigned jobs to each other. All three of us feel more comfortable doing character designs but unfortunately we had to compromise. We decided that Cristian will make the background concepts and design the summoned enemy, Bryony will design the rest of the characters and make their sprite sheets, and I will design the item boosts and do the scripting as out of all three of us, I feel more comfortable with Unity.

This is the quick background Cristian drew for our paper prototype. We wanted some bits to go with our theme but decided to not add any huts to later designs as we want the character to look more like an outcast.

Bryony sketched the designs for the main character. She added a mid-transformation design but to minimize the workload, we will just phase straight into day/night.

Although I am worried about our small group, I am actually looking forward to working in a group and creating a full game.

Walking Simulator Overall Progress



Week 11 - Sound and Ambiance

These last couple of weeks I've been focusing on the scripting and feel of my  game.

I added a plane with a pavement material so that when you look out the window you aren't just looking at nothing. I thought this was a good object to use to connect my sounds to. I attached a soundtrack from YouTube (Up the Spirit Cavern Walls converted with http://www.youtube-mp3.org/) to this plane as well as a sound effect of birds in the background (found on https://www.freesound.org/). I set them both to play on awake and loop. I adjusted the volumes too, making the sound effect much quieter than the soundtrack so that it doesn't distract from it but you can still hear it occasionally which I think gives it a much more realistic and deeper feel.

 I had added lights as well as a large window but I still felt the room felt very dark and dull, as you can see in the screenshot above. I found some scripts that were downloaded with the standard assets pack in unity. I tried adding the bloom script to the main camera in the FPS controller but didn't think it gave it the right affect.

Then I found the bloom and flares script which made everything much lighter. I wanted it to be morning so it wouldn't be very bright so I feel this is just the right amount of light.

Week 09 - Adding materials

As I was looking around in my walking simulator, I noticed that the size of the character in comparison to the objects in the room made it very difficult to tell what things were. As a normal sized character things are more obvious as you can see the whole object, even if it is just a greybox whereas when you are small and on the floor, everything just looks the same.

I decided to download some free material packs from the asset store. We aren't supposed to texture as it would take too long but I felt I needed at least some basic materials in my game. You can't select faces in Unity so when you add a material, it adds it to the whole object. Because of this I went back into Maya and separated some faces from objects such as the floor and part of the lights.

In this screenshot you can see that I used a glass texture for the window. I needed this to bring some light into the room as even with lights it was too dark. Unity has a pre installed glass effect which I had previously tried using. It made the object see through but it was completely invisible and did not look like glass at all so I decided to use the one from the pack which looks like it has a rough glass texture.

I added a metal material to the key as before it completely blended into the book underneath and most people who tested the game completely walked past it. One problem I found is that the materials stretched on each face causing strange patterns like what happened here. I also had the same problem when adding a material to the sofas. I don't think this will be too much of a problem as it is only supposed to be a greybox in the first place.

Week 04 - Walking Simulator in Unity

After seeing how to give objects a trigger I decided to test out my model in Unity with a character.
 

When I first imported in my Maya model it was incredibly small, much smaller than I thought I had made it, especially seeing as my character would be very small. I scaled it but it'll be better if I back to Maya and edit it there. Walking around at the angle the character is at actually helped me noticed lots of little mistakes such as object too far in the wall.

One big issue I found was the fact that you could actually jump onto the steps which I didn't want to be able to as I don't have an upstairs planned. I considered making the character smaller or making the jumping of the character smaller but then you couldn't reach some of the other parts you need to be able to climb so I went back to Maya and stretched the bottom step a little.

Week 03 - Walking Simulator Planning

Before making our walking simulator, we first had to come up with an idea. I couldn't really think of anything straight up so I decided to brainstorm so that I could organize all the ideas a bit.

I wrote down everything I could think of and picked out some I liked coming up with the idea of a horror game based in a school where you wake up in an empty classroom and have to search the school before finding out you are actually dead. I didn't like the sound of this idea as it seemed too typical so I carried on adding to the mindmap before coming up with a completely different idea.

This is the final idea I came up with. It's a very simple idea but I thought seeing everything much larger might be interesting. I researched for a faerie name and found the name Nissa which I like.

I had already started planning a bit of the previous idea on the top half of this page but stopped and started with the new one. I sketched out some of the scenes and interactions I'd like to include as well as the rough size I would like the character to be.

I made a simple storyboard to help give structure to my idea. I wasn't entirely sure how every step would go but this started me off.

I made a map in birds eye view as it is based in a home and it is easier to see this way.

I then made a 3D map of the main room and the path you would be taking to help me when I get round to making it.