Sprint Goals:
- Work through art backlog and implement art assets
- Refine Game Mechanics
- Refine and test Consequences
Stretch Goals:
- Design UI
- Sound & Music
Water Shader & New Islands
Fig 1. Masters 2022. Video of Policies
Consequences
CityBuilding Mechanic
The city building mechanic is designed to get the player emotionally invested in their town, so that they engage in the narrative and decisions and consider choices carefully. Lynch’s The Image of The City discusse the “special pleasure” (Lynch) looking at cities can give and many games have tapped into the aesthetic pleasingness of deisning your very own space.
Fig 2. Masters 2022. Miro Prototype Building System
Placing Buildings
Fig 3. Masters 2022. PlayMaker Building Count System
Visual Consequences – Fire, Smoke & Acid shader
Fig 4. Masters 2022. Smoke and Factory
Fig 5. Masters 2022. Buildings on fire
Ink to Unity, and back to Ink again
Iterating on the script sourced by Dan Cox, I added my own variables and then set the variables like destroyBuilding to integrate with both unity and ink and back again so that players can see visual consequences for their decisions!
Fig 6. Masters 2022. Ink Script
Fig 7. Masters 2022. City Fire
Sound & Music
The main audio track is designed to immerse you into the idea of being in a quiet town or village with nature and traffic sounds. But I also wanted there to be an ambience that you would find on an island of people, so after some brainstorming, I decided to hunt down recorded street music.
https://freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/sounds/171258/
Credits:
Sound from http://www.freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/
Major UI Update
The Climate Change Track
The climate change track is now a more attractive pastel colour, ranging from light yellow to red and pink tones to demonstrate the world ‘heating’ up.
The UI
All the UI element backgrounds are now a more attractive gradient in greens and light blues, the buttons are highlighted when you hover over them and there are open source selected fonts that offer readability.
Fig 8. Masters 2022. Eudaimonia UI
Group Feedback
We are now sharing our work in 5 to 1 group, where we can all feedback to each other. Among lots of great feedback like finding non-direct routes to eliciting emotions like hope and anxiety, there was also group-inspired mechanic building like deadly consequences for sea life when you make bad decisions.
The game mechanics feel ‘barag-ey’, however this is intentional – the aim is to elicit a feeling of anxiety and time running out. Taking this feedback on board though, I feel the game starts off too ‘anxiety inducing’ and the game should only start to feel barag-ey towards the end.
Playtesting
https://sarahdotgames.itch.io/prototype1
Reflection
Sprint 7 has been one of my most productive, and this is likely because it’s one of the first sprints I haven’t had something else going on like holidays, illness or a research proposal to also write! The major parts of the programming this sprint have finally reached their MVP, and while there are still small iterations to be made and bugs to be finished the game has started to work as intended. I have built a narrative system with ink (with the help of Dan Cox and narrative storytelling), I have a card-building system, a counting system, a city-building system and a win-and-lose condition!
The artwork is about 80% of the way there, I need a few more ‘red’ buildings, some polish, some fish to swim and a mountain/island to draw and finish. I would also like to animate a few features, but this will be time-dependent next sprint.
I even managed to work on my stretch goal! The UI has also had a major polish and iteration, I made backgrounds in the same sprint as my cards (sprint 6) and this week I have started to implement and straighten them. In Sprint 8 there will be another iteration, mainly focusing on the cards menu, and on the climate change track.
I have taken a minimalistic approach to Sound and music but getting the mechanics right seemed like the more important task for my project and game.
List of Figures
Figure 1. Sarah MASTERS. 2022. Video of Policies.
Figure 2. Sarah MASTERS. 2022. Miro Prototype Building System.
Figure 3. Sarah MASTERS. 2022. PlayMaker Building Count System.
Figure 4. Sarah MASTERS. 2022. Smoke and Factory.
Figure 5. Sarah MASTERS. 2022. Buildings on fire.
Figure 6. Sarah MASTERS. 2022. Ink Script.
Figure 7. Sarah MASTERS. 2022. City Fire.
Figure 8. Sarah MASTERS. 2022. Eudaimonia UI.
References
ALEXANDER, Christopher, Sara ISHIKAWA and Murray SILVERSTEIN. 1977. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press.
LYNCH, Kevin. 2008. The Image of the City. 33. print. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press.
RUPPRECHT, Christoph et al. 2021. Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures.
TOTTEN, Christopher. 2019. An Architectural Approach to Level Design
TAN, Ekim. 2014. Architecture and the Built Environment
