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Reflections

Overall, I enjoyed working on the project with this team, the game we were able to make within the 12-week time frame didn't comprise too many of the major aspects of the original concept. We felt quite confident with the driving controls early on, which gave us a lot of motivation to keep up the pace and continue adding content.

I once again found myself in a sort of managing role, which involved a lot of consulting with others and making final decisions on things needing to be made, with me being in this role I also felt responsible for helping out in the art side of the game since we were already quite short in that department. Thus, I constantly switched between creating art, coding and designing levels.

 I would have liked to have focused more on coding for our project, even so, I still feel as though the quality of my contributions was quite high and considering the issues we had with the number of artists, I would like to take up the role of technical artist when we return to this project later in January, this way I will be able to aid with the art of the game whilst being able to code and do more technical things.

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Week 11 - 12 Final Stretch

In the final 2 weeks, I spent a lot of time cleaning up visuals and updating UI elements. During both our testing days, we had feedback that it was hard to tell they were losing health as the previous UI element was harder to notice, I suggested to the artists to replicate the UI style I conceived early on in the first weeks, once the 2d elements for that were done, I was able to quickly import them in and I just reassigned the code to work with the new UI elements.

I also took the time to update the QTE prompts as people were struggling to tell which buttons to press. The prompts went from text-based such as " 1 / A ", to sprites I made using Aseprite. I tried drawing the buttons to look just like a key on a keyboard and a button on a controller. I decided not to label the controller buttons so the prompt can be universal no matter what controller the player picks.

To improve the visuals further, I created my own sky box textures using Aseprite and a palette to index the image and then smoothed out the gradient in Photoshop to make it more appealing. In unity, I then created a 6-sided sky box and applied the textures onto each appropriate side, then, we rendered the light and the game looked much more stylised and appealing, getting us a step closer to our chosen aesthetics.

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Week 9 - 10 New level Beach City

I wanted to create a new level for testing, so I began sketching out a level map in Aseprite, I came up with the idea of a beach and a city level, as a lot of classic racing games usually include summer/beach-themed levels. I blocked out the beach area, city area and greenery area, the city section will include the track, which is drawn in a light grey colour and will be weaving in and out of buildings. I then asked the artists to come up with buildings and road assets. I spent a few hours in the engine collecting everyone's assets, organising them into files, and creating the 3d map. I then had to set up the checkpoints and start/finish, the player was to be set up next.

I spent a long time seeing if the player was able to clip out of the new map and kept tweaking the map assets and walls to prevent this until I was satisfied with the final result for testing week.

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Week 6 - 8 Updated Sprites and QTE

After our first testing week, I quickly updated the existing character sprite by making It half the size and using a more consistent planet. the sprite in the top left is the original, and I experimented with simplifying the overall shape and changing the colour of the main character's tracksuit, once I was happy with the colours and shape, I started rendering the piece by adding shadows and highlights.

I wanted to imitate a similar sprite style, which can be found in the game Mad Panic Coaster and I think I managed to achieve the detailed cartoony look quite well. I then gave the new sprite to one of our artists who then animated it and created a lot of new frames.

QTE System

Since our game is meant to be a party racer, we wanted to focus on including other fun mechanics in the game other than strictly driving mechanics. I focused on creating a Quick Time Event (QTE), which the player would be able to initiate at any time and, on a successful pass, would heal the player, allowing them to drive for longer.

The QTEs work by generating a number between 1 and 4; if the number is 2, then the code will count the correct key to be 2 and 1, 3, and 4 will be incorrect. There is controller support, so 2 can either be 2 on the keyboard or B on an Xbox controller, this was done using Unity's input manager.

there are 3 coroutines that can occur, the 1st coroutine is based on the player pressing the right key, the code will then display as correct and will add 1 to the number of QTEs done, the code will then generative a new number an will await the player to input a key.

if the player presses the code, it will display as incorrect, and no number will be added to the number of QTEs done, the code will then generate a new number and will await the player to input a key.

If the player presses nothing for a second the third coroutine will activate and will display as false to the player, again no number will be added to the number of QTEs done, the code will then generate a new number and will await the player to input a key.

Numbers will keep on generating until the player manages to complete 3 QTEs, at which point the QTE will stop, the player will be rewarded with max health, and the number of QTEs will be set back to 0.

The QTEs can only activate when the player presses the button to initiate the QTE, and when the number of QTEs done is 0, this will ensure that you can only ever activate one QTE minigame at a time, and you will be unable to activate another until you complete the first one.

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Week 4 - 5

Engine and file management 

At this point of the project, the group was producing a lot of individual work and designs, so I took the time to catch people up and organise their work within the project. 

Improved level design and tweaked gameplay

In preparation for the testing week, I spent my time improving and overhauling our basic level. This involved creating new materials/textures and upgrading the map from a basic grey layout to including a lot of colour and environmental assets.

Specifically, I redrew the map design digitally and then pixelated it in the app Aseprite which turned out like this

The image on the left was an original sketch, and the image on the right is my updated version.

I worked closely with one of the artists, making textures together and guiding him in what models were needed for the map.

Before and after images of the changes I made with the original level.

The map was filled with many unity blocks, which also served as colliders/walls, so all I did was turn off the mesh rendered on most of the blocks and replace them with the more specialised models and unique assets.

I feel content with the level I was able to design, but I would like to further improve this by experimenting with the skybox and tweaking some colours for the overall game.

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Week 1 - 3 Initial Concepting

Game Conception, Communication setup and presentation

We initially came up with the party racer idea when we were joking around with different game concepts, I took one of those joke concepts and suggested a racing game where you have to play as both the racer and mechanic.

I sat with the group and we came up with a lot of designs. I came up with a lot of ideas for potential minigames, such as drifting at the right angle to gain a boost. Picking up a powerup like a Mario Kart mushroom will initiate a minigame that will involve the player picking the right mushroom out of an assortment of incorrect mushrooms that will slow the player down.

I also drew up some potential UI and level concepts, I wanted the UI to be all situated at the top, with health being at the left side and nitro being on the right, in the middle I thought it could be a fun idea to have the rearview mirror be part of the UI, this will show the players face and will change depending on how well or bad the player is doing.

I drew everything using Clip Studio Paint and was able to quickly sketch out ideas along side the rest of the group.

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Introduction

This is my individual contribution to the project I have been working on from September up until December. I am a coder and am working with 3 other coders and 2 artists.

Our game is called Grease Monkey Grand Prix, and it is a party racer which involves you racing around tracks whilst repairing your car and beating minigames.