Programming my game has forced me to think about the game mechanics and how fun the game is to play without any narrative, art, animation or sound! A narrative, music or art direction might make a game what it is, but it’s worth bearing in mind what the bare bones of your concept are. You are an exploration robot, swimming through the water, dodging harmful environmental effects and other wildlife.

Week 3 Preparation and Tutorials

Swink’s Game Feel and GDC Martin Jonasson and Petri Purho Juice it or lose were two heavy inspirations for beginning to think about how to program my game and how the game mechanics should ‘feel’ at this stage.

During Sprint 1 I came up with the concept and researched my mechanics and assessed my skills. As part of my preparation for Sprint 2, I watched Thomas Brush turns Cyberpunk 2077 into a 2D game, but halfway through his game jam, he panics. Following and adapting this tutorial. Starting my game with a colour palette like Thomas Brush!

Inspiration Abzu

  • Playing Abzu with my son and the feel of the underwater movement
  • How the music in Abzu adds to the game feel
Fig 1. Thomas BRUSH
Fig 2. Playmaker
Fig 3. Brackeys
Fig 4. Brackeys
Fig 5. Screnshot

Sprint 2 Programming

My game was programmed using PlayMaker, and I’ve watched many hours of tutorials since purchasing the plugin in November. I started programming week by setting up the lights, movement and some water physics with ‘Area Effectors’ in 2D. I’ve designated myself mini-rapid ideation for ‘programming week’, from Friday to Monday. I have left myself some time to spend 4 days programming the basics of my game.

Setting up 2D Physics, like any other 2D platformer. Then fiddling with the controls to make it ‘Feel’ like an underwater game.

https://www-gdcvault-com.ezproxy.falmouth.ac.uk/play/1016487/Juice-It-or-Lose

https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/2d-physics#5c7f8528edbc2a002053b6b9

Mini Rapid Ideation

Thursday to Monday 15th February

A ‘Grey Box Prototype’: https://impalpable.itch.io/nameless

I implemented a strategy similar to programming or building a website, I kept going till I got stuck and then I consulted tutorials and official online guidance communities until I solve the problem.

Romi Fauzi YouTube tutorials were a huge help, while I am not building a standard platformer, I interpreted his strategy for programming with PlayMaker and used his hard work to inform my own strategy. I also used Brackeys YouTube tutorials. Brackey programs Unity games with C#, but watching his process showed me a way the game could be built in PlayMaker (and some of the hard work i.e States is done for you in PlayMaker).

Achieved

  • Added Forcefield
  • Health bar
  • UI Crossfade for scene change
  • Player Dead
  • Environment hazards
  • Enemies
  • Projectiles, spawning
  • Battle screen
  • Intro UI screens
  • Collision detection
  • Navmesh

Stretch

Published by Sarah