defender-of-mankind

[defender-of-mankind]

Final Presentation and Write-Up

Intro to Game, Background, and Inspiration:

This is a first-person bug destroying simulator game. It’s called Defender of Mankind, and it is not influenced by any games I’ve ever played, I just thought it would be a fun game to make. Originally, this game was going to be something completely different. It was going to be more free-form, like an adventure game, but I quickly realized that making something to the scale that I was imagining in the time frame given would make it so the project wouldn’t end up the way I wanted it to. In the search for another concept, I ended up having a conversation with my dad about living in New York and how he always had cockroaches in his apartment. We both realized that it would make a pretty funny game, so I began developing on that idea more thoroughly.

Description of Prototype:

My prototype doesn’t actually differ that much from my original concept, and the only big thing that I can think of that’s different is the attack. I was originally going to have a character with arms and legs visible to the player so that the player could stomp on and hit the enemies, making it seem more realistic. However, I found the process of creating and animating the character to be very time-consuming and difficult with the little knowledge that I have about Unity and animating in the first place, so I decided to stick to a simple cross-hair in the middle of the screen and a click-to-kill function.

Another aspect of my original design document that I didn’t see fitting into this game was the idea of collectables. I originally wanted it so you could gain collectables that would increase the area of the light beam, but after going through with so much of the development, I realized that it wasn’t really plausible to include that on the basis of actually scripting it in addition to the idea of collectables not really working for the game concept.

The only other difference that didn’t really change, but I just didn’t include, is the actual background and “lore” of the game. Originally, the idea was that cockroaches are actually aliens sent to observe humanity and learn our weaknesses, and that’s why they can never die. The name of the game was based on this concept and there was going to be a final boss fight with a giant cockroach at the end that I knew wouldn’t make it into this prototype, but hopefully, as I keep developing the game and learning more, I’ll be able to get to that point.

While my prototype did hit most of the things I had planned on testing, there were actually more things that I had to add along the way in order for the game to make sense and function properly. These include the spawner system, the enemy counter system, the timer system, lots of UI, and the gameplay path (moving from the home screen to the actual game and from the game to the game over screen, etc.) to name a few.

Notable Gameplay Systems:

Probably the biggest issue that I faced with this project was the enemy movement. Obviously, I wanted it to look fairly realistic without making it over the top and having each leg or antenna move on all of the 200 enemy models, so I struggled with a lot of different ways to make the movement look realistic but simple. When I first started working on the enemy movement, I was SO hyped to even get them to move, and now looking at the project, I have come so far in literally just a week and a half of working on this system that it’s almost unbelievable. I still have to say, while I am satisfied with the enemy movement for the purpose of this prototype and the amount of time I had to develop it, I still wish there was a little more randomness to them and hopefully as I keep developing this game, that will be something that I can deal with. Overall, though, I’m really proud of how the enemy movement turned out.

Another system that gave me a lot of trouble was the spawners. I struggled for a long time with even how to get started creating the spawners for this game and went through a lot of different ideas and scripts to get to my final system. It’s still not perfect, one issue being that you still have to input the three coordinates for the actual spawn point, as I couldn’t figure out a way to link a game object’s transform position to the spawner and then be able to move the spawner and make duplicates without it messing them all up and having 200 bugs spawn from one single point (absolutely terrifying to see, by the way, even if it was only in a game). In the end, I got it to work out with only the little extra work of actually having to input the correct coordinates for each of the 12 spawners.

the one system that is essential to the game that I actually did not develop myself is the first person camera and controller. This was the first thing that I did, obviously, so I could start developing and testing the other systems, but I was so lost when I first started that I just used the first person camera controller from UNity’s standard assets package. This actually need dup saving me a TON of time and allowed me to move forward with the rest of the game that was actually part of the gameplay.

Testing:

I only had a few playtesters including my dad, sister, brother, roommates, and some coworkers. Everyone said they loved the game and were able to give me good insight into what to add and what I should explain more. This was really a crucial step towards the end of creating this prototype because after playing it myself for so long and knowing what everything did and how to make it do what I wanted it to, seeing someone else play the game allowed me to further explain what was needed and what I could take out.

Because of this, I ended up adding a text box to the game when you first start explaining that you have to defuse all the spawners and kill all the bugs. The other problem I noticed was that a lot of people skipped over the tutorial and then didn’t know the controls, but I’m not sure how to resolve that other than making the game path go from the main screen to the tutorial, but that seemed inconvenient if you already know how to play the game. In the end, I decided to leave it as is, with the tutorial as a separate path to take.

Final Touches:

After finishing basically everything on my list of things to get done, I decided to jump into something that I didn’t think I would have time for which was sound. From the beginning of this concept, I wanted to add bug sounds to make it creepier and more realistic. I found that the sound also helped as a cue so players were more aware of when enemies were spawned instead of just seeing the number of enemies go up in the corner of the screen. It was super creepy to code it all and make sure it worked, but I’m happy with how it turned out.

I also decided to add an intro screen with a brief introduction to the game. Initially, I wanted it to explain the whole concept of the world I created, but I decided to steer away from making it more complicated than it needed to be and just put 3 simple lines setting up the story and why the player is in this place. I also added more sound to this, having a skittering sound travel left and right across the canvas so that when you have headphones on it sounds like they’re moving from ear to ear. Super creepy but also sounds really cool.

After that, I cleaned up a few things, mainly making sure that the player doesn’t get stuck anywhere and moved some objects around to ensure that everything was spread out properly.

Finally, I decided to do some post-processing. This was a fun stage, and also very quick because I didn’t want to add too much and clutter the screen that already has so much going on. So I added a little bit of grain to make it creepier, some slight ambient occlusion to deepen the shadows, the smallest bit of bloom just because I wanted to see what it would do, and probably the most noticeable was the motion blur. I was actually really pleasantly surprised to see how the motion blur affected the player’s movement, making it seem jerky and almost frightened. It worked really well and I played with the settings a little bit to make sure it wasn’t overwhelming and distracting from the game.

After that, I built the game and called it done!

Conclusions:

There were so many things involved in this project that I never thought would come up, simply because I wasn’t totally aware of how the program works and what it actually takes to build a game. There were many times where I was beyond frustrated with a single line of code that just wasn’t doing what I wanted it to, but that made it so I had to take a step back and really look at the problem and think of various ways that I could solve it. Because of this, I actually learned way more than I ever thought I could learn about coding and about the Unity program in just 6 weeks.

My favorite parts of this project were creating the scene and learning a new coding language. In the past, I have taught myself how to code, mainly HTML and some basic CSS a few years ago, and I had to take MATLAB as a course last academic year, but learning C# was completely different from any language I’ve learned before. Through class time and scouring the internet for documentation and forums on why my code wasn’t working, I learned more about this language and how to make it do what I want it to do than I ever learned using MATLAB or any other language. I think the main reason for this is because I had something that I could reference back to and see if the change I made to the code actually made a difference to the game. I am a very visual learner and being able to see that my code changed part of the actual game was really cool.

Overall, I really enjoyed this project and learning so many new things that I know will apply to future projects. Having this class as the first one I take as an IDM major was a great experience and I can’t wait until I can start new projects and new classes.

Link to my Final Game Build: https://drive.google.com/open?id=18BBb_8o1MlSJ2FH2zIAfptmpwz8-s8qm

Link to Final Game Package: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uDcZF6dnj6DQm3hac1Inb1JKUwb0craf

Link to my Final PowerPoint Presentation: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nc1sGrmHPd98plYVTdMosV62VqggKCKA

[defender-of-mankind]

Assignment 03: Final Design Document

https://defender-of-mankind.tumblr.com/post/185587937371/assignment-2-design-document

The link above is to the original post of my design document for this game. I am sticking with this idea and have started designing the level already.

I have been working on the level design, making sure that the character controls work properly, and then moving on to the game controls like the enemy spawners and the attacks. (“enemies” refers to the roaches, but I really don’t want to write “roaches” a hundred times during this process). Once those are complete, I will move on to the flashlight and potentially more advanced attacks like the frying pan or lighting the stove on fire. 

I anticipate that the spawner is going to take up a lot of my time, as well as getting the controls right for the enemies. I want their movements to be random and different from each other, so I need to figure out a way to randomize and track the movement of the enemies. Additionally, I need to track how many enemies are on screen at once, since there can only be a certain amount of them on screen and the player loses if the number of enemies exceeds the amount allowed.

The most difficult part of this is going to be how I trigger the enemies. I wanted it to be that when the flashlight beam interacts with the spawner, the enemies begin spawning, but I’m not sure if light can interact with enemies in this way. I may need to add a trigger element to the flashlight and have that interact with the spawner.

My first tasks right now are to get the character movement right (i.e. tracking head movement and then having the flashlight follow) as well as the main attack which is stomping on the enemies. Once those are complete, I can begin to create the level atmosphere and the enemies.

[defender-of-mankind]

Assignment 03: TailWind Level Design

For this assignment, I was focused more on trying to get the controls the way I wanted rather than making the game as challenging or “interesting” as possible. For me, this is probably the most important aspect of a game at this stage, since the details and the pretty aesthetic stuff can all be added later.

So, after making the most basic of layouts for my game and placing 3 collectibles, I decided to try to fix the wall-jumping and wall-sticking issue. This proved to be more difficult than I originally thought, which doesn’t make much sense to me since this seems like it would be a pretty common issue. I tried adding a second collider to the platform and added a physics material that was slippery and bouncy to push the player away from the platform and make it fall away, but this didn’t work and the player still got stuck to the wall. This also created a lot of camera jitter every few tries which wasn’t happening before the added collider. I tried playing around with the physics material more, but nothing seemed to be working, and I was getting annoying with having to restart the game every time I fell, so I moved on to the next issue: respawning.

I know this wasn’t part of the assignment, but I thought that it was an important thing to add since I suck at the controls on this game and wanted to make it easier for myself to test out the wall-hugging issue. So I created an empty gameobject and added a trigger and called it “DeathZone,” then added a script to the player called “RespawnPlayer” and got to work. The script was easy enough to make, I just added a public gameobject that was called spawnPoint and attached it to an empty gameobject on the first platform, then added an OnTriggerEnter function and created an “if” statement saying that if the player collides with the death zone, it will be transported back up to the spawn point. It worked on the first try which was a welcome change to how my scripts usually work.

From there, I tried to go back to the wall jumping issue. I kept noticing that the player would slightly fall when colliding with the side of a platform and then completely stop for some reason. I could still jump slightly and unless I tried moving forward, the jumps wouldn’t get me high enough to make it to the top of the platform, but I was curious as to why the player got stuck. Even more curious, as I rotated the player, they would become unstuck and fall down. I originally thought that this was just because the player rotating just shimmied it free of the wall, but I realized that the visor was getting hooked on the top of the platform and would prevent the player from falling until I rotated the player away from the wall and the visor wasn’t hooked on anymore. To solve this, I just removed the collider from the visor and now the player falls away from the wall perfectly fine. With this solved, it is now much more difficult to jump from the wall, since the collision is so short. So, for now, I’m going to leave it for now.

Just as a side note, I noticed that if you held the space bar down, the player would just keep flying forever, so I fixed that by re-tagging all of the platforms as platforms so that the jump function would work properly.

I ended up adding a few more collectibles to the scene, as well as some more platforms, and in an effort to make the game more interesting, I actually decided to use the bug in order to have the player collect the last collectible which I gave a new shape, name, and material. I called it “SuperCollectible,” it’s worth 7 points, is a wonderful gold material, and you have to use the bug in order to jump off the side of a platform and glide your way to the collectible.

I understand that the purpose was to eliminate this issue, but I thought, at least for now, that I would leave it in to give the players something to think about and to discover. There is literally no other way to get this last collectible since I haven’t added any wind yet, so it might be a little frustrating until the player figures it out. (I was also using this glitch because I kept falling off the map and needed a quick way to get back across to where I had died.)

The final thing that I added was a script that tells you when you’ve reached the end of the level. Right now, it just gives a statement in the console, but my idea was to have it transport you to the next level eventually. I also tried adding a checkpoint to the level in order to make it easier to continue in case you die halfway through (something I did very often) but I couldn’t figure it out and use it the way I wanted. I tried adding another “if” statement to my respawn script, but when I hit the checkpoint and then died, it just spawned me back at the beginning again. I definitely want to try to get that to work and use it in my final project though.

Throughout this assignment, I didn’t experience the camera jitter when collecting a collectible once, even though I tried to trigger it, so I’m not sure if it’s because I wasn’t interacting with the collectible properly or if it was another issue, but if I had encountered it, I was going to see if changing the collision from a cube to a sphere would have helped to fix it. My thinking behind this was that the capsule collider and the box collider of the collectible were colliding in a weird way that was moving the character or the dolly and, therefore, creating a camera jitter. I was thinking that the smooth surfaces interacting with each other would have avoided this issue and prevented camera jitter.

Overall, I definitely focused more on the inner workings of this level as opposed to the aesthetics, but I came across some bugs that I fixed (or tried to fix) and ended up developing some other aspects that I realized were important, like the respawning and the way I tried to make a checkpoint.

Below is the Google Drive link to my finished project file:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hK3J7TyvTHR6qQ3KDS2PXdGkIMHkgBJE/view?usp=sharing

[defender-of-mankind]

Assignment 2: Reflection on Reading

In this part of the reading, we learned about game mechanics and how the different mechanics can change a game drastically. The six mechanics--Space, Objects, attributes, and states, Actions, Rules, Skill, and Chance--all work together to create a functioning game.

The most interesting game mechanic to me was the mechanic of rules. There are way more aspects to rules than I ever thought, and different types of rules dictate the type of gameplay someone will have. Rules can change all the time, and sometimes, certain rules won’t even be stated in the instructions and will be adopted by the player to make gameplay better. The different levels of rules are also interesting to me. From the operational rules that are required to just play the game, to the more advanced laws and official rules that sometimes aren’t outwardly stated in the gameplay manual. It’s interesting to see how all these rules interact with each other and how they all contribute to the overall gameplay. 

The reading also mentioned a lot about probability in games and different rules of probability. While I think these are important in some games, I do not see myself diving into much probability in the actual gameplay, but more so in the spawning of characters and enemies and the presence of certain collectibles. In order to give my game more of a feeling of earning the collectibles, I plan to not have them drop after defeating every enemy, but rather, on a calculated cycle, say, every 3 monsters you get one collectible, or if you defeat a monster in under three attacks, you get 2 collectibles. I think using probability in actual gameplay is better suited for puzzle games, so you may have a different outcome every time you play.

Chapter 11 covered a lot of material, all on the concept of balancing your game. Game balance means making sure that the game is fair while also being challenging, and is something that the player wants to interact with. If you market a shooter game to someone who enjoys chess, they may not see the connection and will not get the experience they want from the game. Making sure that the game as a whole--as well as all of the parts of the game--work well together is essential to creating a good gaming experience. The Balance Type that intrigued me the most was number 11, Simple Vs. Complex. Throughout the process fo thinking of a game concept and creating a design document, I have been struggling with making my ideas as clear as possible without also making the background and gameplay confusing and overwhelming. This is something that I will continue to work through in order to create an experience that involves creativity and problem solving without muddying up the actual gameplay. Overall, I think I need to work on just making sure that while my backstory makes sense to the end goal of the game, it does not detract from the actual experience of playing by getting too in-the-way or confusing.

Overall, this reading gave me a lot of insight into how I am developing and designing my game and allowed me to fully develop my newest idea which is detailed in the post below. 

(yes, I did change my idea...again...but this is the real one this time)

[defender-of-mankind]

Assignment 2: Design Document

Defender of Mankind - Design Document

Blurb: Defender of Mankind is a first-person action/adventure game where the player must defeat all enemies—cockroaches—while protecting the home base.

Background: Cockroaches are believed to be indestructible, even able to survive a nuclear winter. No other creature on Earth is capable of this, and for centuries, we wondered why. That is, until aliens made contact. We were all alarmed to find that they strongly represented the small, un-killable, fiends we have come to truly loathe. Their message was clear: we have come to destroy you. Their operatives have been watching us since the dawn of time, gathering information and sending it back to the mothership. You must act now and kill as many of them as you can, before it’s too late.

Gameplay: This game takes place in a single scene: a darkened, rundown, New York City apartment. The player comes home to find that the lights do not turn on. They grab a flashlight and shine it into the apartment. On the edges of the light beam, they see little creatures skittering across the floor. They retreat under the refrigerator, into the oven, on the stove, under cups and bowls drying next to the sink, under the couch, between pillows, and anywhere else they can squeeze themselves into. The player must act stealthily in order to kill all of the cockroaches. They shine the flashlight in order to flush the cockroaches out of hiding, then stomp and smash them with various objects lying around in order to squash them for good. When they finally defeat all of the cockroaches in the apartment, the front door swings open and they see the staggeringly tall silhouette of the Mother of All Cockroaches. Its antennae twitch as they get ready to attack. The player must defeat this boss in order to prevent their global takeover.

Mechanics: Walking, stomping, moving flashlight, increased light beam, grabbing objects and using them as weapons, jumping, health bar, score bar

Tools: Flashlight, feet for stomping, frying pan for smooshing, Raid™ for spraying, turning the stove on for burning.

Collectables and Behavior:

-Light Collectable: when killing certain cockroaches, the player gets power-ups that increase the field of view of the flashlight, making it easier to see and kill the cockroaches

-Strength Collectable: when killing certain cockroaches, the player gets power-ups that increase their strength when hitting and stomping on cockroaches, making them easier to kill.

Prototype Testing: flashlight movement and light behavior, basic mechanics—walking, stomping, cockroach skittering, cockroach spawning. Will test art style (kind of), level set-up, world set-up, and maybe the origin story to make sure it makes sense.

Prototype Will NOT Test: Final boss (probably), score counter, maybe some of the collectables, certain weapons (lighting the stove on fire to kill all the cockroaches)

Author’s Note: This game concept came about after a conversation I had with my dad about his old New York apartments and his experience with cockroaches. I had asked him earlier in the day about any advice he had about my other game idea, and while he said he couldn’t pinpoint why, he didn’t feel like it was a very original or interesting concept, so I went back to the drawing board to think of something else, which just so happened to be this game. It was initially just supposed to be about killing the cockroaches, but I still wanted to keep the name of the game “Defender of Mankind,” so we came up with a backstory and origins in order to make the game concept work with the title. I’m hoping to better develop the ideas and lore of this universe and the alien invasion to better suit the gameplay and the goal of the game.

[defender-of-mankind]

Assignment 1: Reflection on Reading

In the second reading, pages 97-127, the author focused much more on the player and how to make a game that is engaging because it reflects the player’s needs, wants, and desires in a game. This is probably the most important aspect that I can think of, because if a game looks pretty but has no objective or an objective that doesn’t follow the player’s wants, then it will not be considered a “good” game no matter how pretty it is. In the opposite side, it is important that a player’s aesthetics are pleased to a degree, but making sure that there is a goal and that the player feels satisfied and accomplished by the end trumps any one art style. Some of my brother’s favorite games are 8-bit style, but the objective and the gameplay is what keeps him interested, even though there is limited detail to the actual art.

Additionally, the author touched on the difference between girl players and boy players, and how gender plays into that difference. I was interested to hear the actual reason that girls don’t like to play violent games and boys do, and that while most video games are geared towards boys since they are the main consumer, there are clear ways to make these games and more targetted towards a female audience, and that some video games have already achieved that. I have also been continuing to think about my own game concept throughout this reading and have been trying to answer the questions that the author poses when he introduces a lens, and have decided that the original idea that I had, the one I briefly touched on in the first reflection, will not be an interesting game to play for my “target audience,” my brother. In fact, a “real life” game would much better suit my sister, who enjoys planning things meticulously and would love to have the opportunity to roam free in her own world. 

Instead, I have decided to change the game to something more adventurous and exciting, based more in a fantasy world, while still maintaining my original goals of adventure, exploration, family, and belonging. My new idea is to have the player be chosen to defend the world from the 5 titans that have taken control and are draining the resources from the Earth. The goal the player must achieve is to defeat all five titans at different stages of the game, to not die along the way by being killed by each titan’s minions, and to return the energy of each titan to the Earth in order to restore balance. The reason that this blog is called “defender of mankind” is because that is what I want to name the game, and I ended up working the concept around that title.

These readings have given me a good idea of what I need to accomplish before I even think about getting started on the actual development of the game including what I want the player to achieve, what I want the experience to be, how I want the player to get there, and how to ensure that I am creating a game that the player wants to take part in, among many many other questions that I still have to answer. 

[defender-of-mankind]

I found this really cool series on game design that Riot Games put out. It’s got 10 parts and was super helpful with just visualizing all the different parts if the process of making a game

[defender-of-mankind]

Assignment 1: Rube Goldberg Machine

Friday, May 31st

1:30pm

Alrighty so we just sat down and opened Unity and I’m just gonna jump into this project. My plan is to get familiar with the software a little bit since I don’t know Unity…like, at all. There’s gonna be a lot of failures and frustration but we’re gonna make it work.

Once I have the most basic handle on how to make things fall and roll, then I’ll start throwing together a design and then put it all together in the program.

I’m coming into this assignment with no knowledge of the software, the coding language, the physics, or the controls, so let’s get going.

2:30pm

So, one hour later and things are moving! One thing, actually. I made a ball roll.

Needless to say, I’ve been struggling. Full on the struggle bus with this one.

The biggest problem I kept running into is that I don’t know Unity, so the first hour of this project was just me constantly trying to run the game to see if something would change and it would magically work because I didn’t even know where to start.

Google has been my best friend and I have, like, 25 tabs open right now.

I feel like an explanation of what I had to go through during this part wouldn’t do the process justice, so, here’s a list of some of the things I Googled while trying to figure out how to make this machine:

how to add objects in unity

unity ball asset download

unity ball asset download free

how to make a ball roll down a hill in unity

ball not falling in unity

why won’t objects move in unity

what is a rigid body in unity

how to add a rigid body to a ball in unity

ball going through objects in unity

how to add colliders in unity

why aren’t colliders working in unity

After frustration and countless test runs, I finally figured it out. Not only do you need a rigid body on the object that is falling, but both objects also need to have colliders and all colliders and rigid bodies need to be of the same dimension, meaning you can’t have a 2D rigid body and a 3D collider on the same object.

Also, I made my design. It’s got a lot going on and I’m thinking I might have to download some 3D files online for the parts that aren’t basic shapes like spheres and cubes. I’m really excited about the funnel part of it. I wanted it to be like one of those funnels that you see in museums for donations where you can slide a coin down it and it circles its way down to the bottom, and hopefully the ball will be able to do the same thing. I also have a catapult in there, not sure if that’s gonna work because I’m definitely gonna need to find a 3D model (or make it) but it needs to have a spring-loaded action in order to make the ball catapult since I can’t click it to activate it or anything. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find one that works, who knows.

I’m moving on now to the rest of the build, hopefully, we won’t have any more issues….

6:00pm

Well…we ran into more issues.

My original design was made with no knowledge of the capabilities that Unity has involving collisions and rigid bodies, so after my brief, self-taught crash course on the basics, I felt that I had a good handle on how and why we need collisions and thought the rest of the process would go fairly smooth.

Boy was I wrong.

I thought the funnel was going to be easy enough, just add another collision and it would just work, but I didn’t realize that since it’s such an irregular shape, you need specific kind of collisions otherwise the ball just goes right through. The problem is, that kind of collision is considered a 3D collision, not a 2D collision.

Since I had used 2D collisions for all of my blocks and the balls, I wasn’t able to make the irregularly shaped funnel collide with the ball, since you can’t mix 2D and 3D collisions and I needed to add a mesh collision to the funnel because it’s a complex and irregular shape, which is a 3D collision. So, in my efforts to make this work, I changed all of my collisions to 3D collisions. 

The issue with this was that I had adjusted the gravity for one of the blocks that fell and slingshotted another ball into the funnel thing, but with 3D collisions and 3D rigid bodies, you can’t adjust the gravity in the same way as you can the 2D ones without scripts which I don’t know how to use. 

So I ended up changing all the collisions back to 2D collisions because I read somewhere that there is a 2D collision option for irregular shapes, the polygon collision tool, so I thought that would make it work the way I wanted it to with the gravity change and everything, but it didn't go too well...

I think this tool could definitely be really helpful in situations like this or when you just need a collision on part of an object and you want it to be more accurate than just the box colliders, but I was just having so much trouble grasping how to make it do what I wanted it to, so I tried to rework my whole design in order to have the slower falling block (since I can’t change gravity, bummer) bump a ramp that would send the ball rolling into the funnel, but the ball ended up rolling too slowly and just went straight down the funnel instead of swirling the way I wanted it to, so after all the work of changing the collisions and rigid bodies, I was still stuck.

I think I might have to ditch the funnel idea, which is unfortunate because it would’ve been so cool if it actually worked the way I wanted it to but without the scripts to help it move the way I want it to, I don’t think it’s gonna look good. I also realized that the 3D collisions are more limiting than the 2D collisions, so I want to keep using the 2D collisions in hopes that some of the later stuff in my design will work the way I want it to.

I might change the funnel into something like a basketball hoop just to make the transition to the next part more interesting and try to keep the same idea that I was going for, but I’ll probably have to rework everything again because I know the catapult is not going to work the way I want it to, mostly because I can’t find an asset anywhere that has something like a spring-loaded catapult that doesn’t require scripts, so I’ll save that for another day.

Saturday, June 1st

10:00am

Alrighty, we’re back at it after last night. I got distracted with dinner and decided it was better to sleep on it than getting more frustrated trying to figure out my design. I did more research about collisions and trying to get a mesh collision to work with 2D collisions, but it seems like that’s just not something the software can do. I am still kind of sad that I couldn’t find a way to make the funnel work the way I wanted it to, and the catapult is definitely not going to work either because of the intricacies of the program that I didn’t know when I first designed it. Basically, I wanted the machine to catapult one of the balls through some hoops that would set off the next chain reaction, but that’s been taken out now.

Hopefully, this will end up working better. I’m still trying to keep the same kind of elements in order to get to the end goal and not make it super boring, but for now, I’m going to finish what I can and we’ll check in when I get stuck again (because we all know I’m definitely gonna get stuck again at some point.)

12:00pm

I lied! No more stucks!

I finished the final design that I had with minimal changes and it actually works!! I’m still kind of upset that I had to change some parts of it like the funnel, and the basketball hoop idea turned into a tube but that didn’t work either because I ran into the same issue with needing collisions but the ball wouldn’t interact with the tube the way I wanted to unless I used 3D collisions, so I changed it to this ramp down/step idea thing. And then the other part that didn’t work was the catapult and since my design needed a way for the reaction to get higher than it already was, I placed some dominos up a staircase and that finished the machine!

To be completely honest, I wish that there was more to it, so I’ll probably end up adding more, but I saved the file as is so I have that as a back up if something goes wrong. I really like the way I did then end because in a lot of Rube Goldberg Machines, it kind of just “ends” but I had it end by giving the last block a purpose: to finish the tower. I’m really happy with the way this turned out and I learned so much in the process about basic physics in the game and what needs to be applied in order to make that happen.

One part that I’m particularly proud of is the tiltey ramp thing close to the end where the block falls and makes the ball roll down from the other side. I first tried making that just with normal cubes in Unity, but quickly discovered that with the rigid bodies and collisions that I needed that the whole thing fell apart as soon as I ran the simulation, so I decided to design it myself. I used Shapr3D which is an iPad app that is just the best 3D modeling software I have ever used. It’s way more hands-on than just a mouse and keyboard because I actually get to track around the object and design it with my pencil and hands. In my opinion, it makes designing so much easier. So I’m really happy with the way that one turned out.

I’ll probably end up fixing the middle section where the ball falls down the little ramps because I think it looks kind of messy and it could be a much more interesting section, since it was originally supposed to be the funnel/basketball hoop idea, but overall I’m super proud of myself with how far I’ve come using this software in just under a day, and I can’t wait to see what I’ll be capable of by the end of the course.

Monday, June 3rd

1:45pm

RED FREAKING ALERT!!! I SCREWED EVERYTHING UP!

I was talking to one of my friends who knows Unity well and asking how to export the package and when it all came up I realized there were a lot of assets that were in the package that I didn’t use, so in my effort to clean everything up a little bit, I started deleting asset packages that I didn’t use.

OR SO I THOUGHT!

I accidentally deleted all of the platforms and ramps from the WHOLE THING because I didn’t realize that the asset was in one of the packages that I deleted. I tried to troubleshoot and get the package back, but I totally ignored the warning that once you delete a package it can’t be undone.

So long story short, I had to remake the ENTIRE PROJECT from scratch. rip.

It went pretty quickly and only took me about 2 hours to redo the whole thing and it actually gave me time to rethink some of the designs and potentially add some more components. I ended up keeping most of what I already had but I changed the end a little bit to make it a tad more exciting. I also increased the gravity on all moving objects to make them fall a little quicker because my parents said it was a little slow to watch. I also added one massive feature to the end that I quite enjoy. It serves little purpose other than to give me a chuckle, but still. (I had to put the video in a separate post)

So, now I think I’m actually done and I learned my lesson to only upload the asset packages I need to the project and to NOT DELETE ANY OF THEM EVER.

This process took me over 8 hours of working time to fully complete, but I learned a lot and made a lot of mistakes that I know not to make next time. While I was so frustrated that I completely deleted most of my project, it actually showed me how much I’ve improved just in the few days I’ve been working on this project and how I can be much more efficient and work faster now that I (kind of) know what I’m doing.

Below is the Google Drive link to the Unity Package:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GuA92kmZMyIdXKUJx5-FQTk_MYUpXr3E/view?usp=sharing

[defender-of-mankind]

Original Rube Goldberg Machine

(Before I ruined it)

[defender-of-mankind]

Final Rube Goldberg Machine with Surprise Ending

[defender-of-mankind]

Assignment 0: Reflection on Reading

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Art of Game Design and can see myself finishing the book in the future. The topics covered and the way that ideas are presented are very different from what I have seen and expected from game design books that I have dabbled with in the past. It was very narrative and informative while also allowing the reader to come up with insights on their own without them being outwardly stated. I think that this is an important aspect of learning and teaching game design, because design itself is so subjective that we must be able to have our own ways of thinking about something in order for it to be our own thought, and game design is no different. 

Another thing I noticed was that I was already thinking of ideas and concepts for my own games as I was reading. Specifically, I have had this one concept in mind for quite some time now and have never had the means nor the time or instruction to be able to fully invest myself in creating it. The idea started simply as wanting to make a 3D model of my childhood home with every detail I could fit, however, it quickly morphed into a gift for my brother, where he would navigate through the model, and upon approaching his gaming room in our basement, would be sucked through a portal into another dimension and would have to find his way home, encountering enemies and monsters, and coming across friends and family along the way too. 

As I was reading, I started thinking about how this concept can be applied to the different lenses discussed in the book, and mainly the ones we discussed in class on 5/29. The first noticeable one would be the lens of surprise, as it wouldn’t be immediately clear when entering the game that the house is not the whole adventure, and being sucked into another dimension would come as quite a surprise, I would presume. This also goes along with the lens of problem-solving, as the main issue would be “how do I get back?” 

Second, on the lens of essential experience, the experience that I want the player (specifically my brother) to have is a feeling of adventure and exploration as well as family and belonging. The idea for this experience originates from the fact that my brother is graduating high school next week and will be leaving home for college. I wanted him to have something to take with him, and since he can’t physically take our whole house, I thought an interactive model would do the trick. Bringing in the aspect of the game part came as the idea developed, and as the author of the book stated, changes in design and story happen all the time, and the only way you can make a good game is to go through those drafts and iterations until it’s perfect.

I also think the lens of curiosity would be very important for this game idea, as I want there to be as much possibility for exploration as possible. While I still want there to be a story involved, I think that having a sandbox-like gameplay would give the player more opportunities to discover the capabilities and limitations of the character in a more investigative way, rather than just stating outright what is and is not possible. 

Something else that I have been thinking of throughout this process is the fact that I myself am limited in my experience, as I have not played many games and would not consider myself a very experienced gamer. However, I do like to think that I have a creative mind and I enjoy learning new things and having new experiences, making this a very interesting task to take on. 

I am excited to learn more about game design, as well as how to make my ideas come to reality as I develop my own game.