louisbyear2-project3

[louisbyear2-project3]

Gameplay Video

[louisbyear2-project3]

Conclusion

Overall this project was mostly a success, I got my game finished to a good standard of an MVP and I felt complete with the game I created. However I am not too happy about my game look visually unpleasing but that comes with focusing on gameplay, in the span of a month it is very hard to focus on both visuals and gameplay so I'm not too annoyed.

[louisbyear2-project3]

Game Anglia Festival

Presenting our game 'Chroma' due to the fact that our team knew everything about the game so it was very easy to talk about it and walk people through our game, many people played our game and we tried to engage with a lot of them but we also wanted to play some of the other games that were on show so most people played by themselves and figured the game out alone.

People gave lots of nice feedback on our game saying that the art style is very visually pleasing (which I'm really happy about), they said the movement was very fluent and the design of the game was very well made and promising. Another nice bit of feedback was getting the 'Best Student Game' award so that was nice. Yes I feel our game might have been a bit confusing for a first play through so we had to talk to some people to get them through some of the levels.

We need to make our game a bit more beginner friendly and CLAMP THE GAME TO THE MIDDLE SO IT DOESN'T DO THAT WEIRD THING BEING ON THE RIGHT SIDE BUT NOT THE LEFT. I think they were relatively clear because a lot of people were passing the levels with little to no problem and figured out the paints.

Yes it was the right version but there were a few things that we missed in development that I said before. Possibly refine the game a tiny bit before we go or maybe have some sort of QR code to go to the Itch.io page so that people can download it for themselves.

I did not document the presentation. I played a few of the games and I enjoyed all of them, a game that stood out to me though was 'Task Time' due to the visuals being simplistic and the gameplay being smooth and fast-paced instantly made it an interesting game to me and it was very interesting and fun (it also won an award).

I spoke with two developers and it was very interesting to see their point of view on the game and understand their workings, they gave some tips and helped me understand a few things about gamemaking as a whole. I spoke to them about their games as well and gave my point of view on it and how it could maybe be improved or better understood.

Unfortunately I did not add any devs on any social medias like Linkedin or Instagram but I had very good talks with them. I wish listed 'Task Time' because it looked very interesting to me and I'm excited to see how it improves over time.

The industry talks were very interesting in that it gave us in insight on what it is like to get started as a game developer, this gave me an idea on what to possibly do in the future and how to handle university. I also enjoyed how realistic they were about it and not saying that everything is perfect and easy to get into but they also focused on some struggles with working in the gaming industry.

My overall experience was good, I spoke to devs, got insight on what it's like working in the gaming industry and people really enjoyed our groups game. We also won the award for the 'Best Student Game' so that was also very cool.

The games that were chosen and the opportunities that were presented were perfect, it was all so well done and well organised. Next year they could possibly have a more open venue because it was very cramped and the seating area was way too big so you could hardly traverse the venue.

[louisbyear2-project3]

Gameplay Video

This is the finished Bartending game, it is far from finished but I am proud of my work on the gameplay.

[louisbyear2-project3]

Problem with Settings

In the Graphics menu the settings don't save, like the resolution and V-sync both don't work

and the sound slider doesn't either and also the accessibility button doesn't take you anywhere either. I don't have time to fix this but I think to fix the problem I would need to make a gamemode and bind the buttons to it to save the settings in the new gamemode so they will save while the person is still in the same round/turn. It is a very hard thing to get working and I do not have enough time to make them work but at least visually they are there.

[louisbyear2-project3]

State of the game

I'm slightly upset that I couldn't make the game really any better than the MVP but I'm happy I achieved it. The gameplay turned out exactly how I wanted it to but the visuals are FAR from good, I'm really disappointed with myself that I couldn't make the visuals look good but for this project I did want to focus on gameplay rather than any visuals.

This is how the game looks currently and the visuals are lacking but I am happy with the gameplay, it is accessible and plays like a good and working game with little to no bugs. It's far from done for my standard but it is good enough as an MVP.

[louisbyear2-project3]

Tutorial Improvement

I made all of the tutorial screens have controls to help the player instead of just telling them what to do with no guidance.

[louisbyear2-project3]

Tutorial

This is the beginning of a tutorial I have made. It is very simple and that is just due to time constraint, there are multiple widgets that I've made and they are triggered by different events. And this first one is when you first start the game.

This is the next step, pouring the drink. This is triggered by the player possessing the glass selection and selecting a drink.

This is the widget that pops up after you pour the drink, and it's just redirecting you to the snacks.

This widget appears when you grab a snack.

This is the final widget and it pops up when you give the customer the food and drink, I'm going to try and improve upon the tutorial with controls and possibly more information but not too much because I want it to be short and insightful rather than long winded so nobody reads it.

Outlines:

I'm finally putting this to good use with the tutorial, with every widget comes an outline with what is meant to be used.

This is a gameplay video but it shows the outlines and tutorials.

[louisbyear2-project3]

Making a Customer

This code is to check if the player has the requested item from the customer, if the player does have the correct items but hasn't filled the drink up the customer says one of these,

However if the player has not got the correct items the customer will say one of these,

This code is just to reset the selections previously made for the drink and food.

This is the start of the code for the customer to walk away from the bar and a different customer to walk up and request a drink and snack.

These screenshots are the code for if the customer is waiting too long, they will start to complain by saying something from this selection,

This is the code to insert the specific drink and food into these texts,

How this code works is that the ':f' and ':g' are replaced by a food a glass randomly and the random food and glass is checked so that the player has to pick the correct one.

And finally this code is just so the customer randomly picks a glass and food at the start of the game and also so they walk in at the beginning.

Gameplay:

Actually playing my game is fun but looking at it is not so fun. I'm sad I couldn't focus on the visuals more but I liked the concept of the game so I wanted to focus on making the game playable.

[louisbyear2-project3]

This Weeks Accomplishment and Next Weeks Target

This week my goal was to finish making my MVP and I have successfully achieved this, for next week I want to try and polish up my game and make it more playable and accessible. I wanted to make my game visually pleasing but I think that’s gunna be hard with the given time.

[louisbyear2-project3]

Food Basket

The code for the food basket is the exact same as the glasses, the only difference is that I used a different Enum and different models.

This is the model I made for the different food that can be asked for from left to right it's peanuts, crisps and beef jerky. I need to add more for variety or different types of each of them but right now there are 9 different combinations of glasses and foods. Right now you have to have one of both food and glass size but I'm going to try and make it so they can ask for just food or just a drink so it's not just 9 combinations.

[louisbyear2-project3]

Some 3D Models

I have been working on 3D Models for my glasses and they came out good, they could be better but I can tweak it.

The Pint glass was easy because I only needed to extrude a cylinder upwards and then make enlarge some of the sides to make the shape that I wanted and then I just extruded the top down to make it look like a glass. Then finally I smoothed out the model with 2 divisions.

I took inspiration from pint glasses I have at home that look similar to this but a little bit wider at the bottom.

For my half pint glass I took inspiration from some that I have in my cupboard at home but look like this:

The half pint glass was much easier to model as all I needed to do was enlarge a cylinder up and then extrude the middle down to make it a glass and I also smoothed this out with 2 divisions.

The shot glass was easy because I just had to make the top of the cylinder wider and then extrude the middle down to make it a glass. This was also smoothed out with 2 divisions.

This was the inspiration for the shot glass and I picked this because it was similar to the half pint glass.

[louisbyear2-project3]

Working on the Glasses

I removed ALL of this unnecessary code and replaced it to make it shorter and actually work well.

This is the improved way of selecting and highlighting the glasses, I made an Enum to store the information of the glasses and this made it much easier to code with the select nodes and arrays.

Cycling through the glasses is also easier because I just have to use the custom event and change the index to 1 and -1 depending on what way I press the joystick.

The information is stored here in the enum that I can access even if I posses different pawns.

I had previously used this code to show the glass at the drink pump but that didn't work at all because the information was not being stored between pawns.

But now I am using this to set the visibility of the glasses at the drink pump using the enum.

And finally I made this function in the default player to make the player hold the specific glass they selected by setting the visibility.

This is how it looks in game:

[louisbyear2-project3]

Problem with Glasses

Right now everything is working for the glasses but I am trying to get the player to select the glass then put it under the beer tap but I can't figure out how to make this work.

This is code in the beer tap to make the glass appear when the correct one is selected from the glasses but it just isn't working, I think it has something to do with the player possessing something else and that data getting lost or discarded because the player is possessing something else so I think I need to store the data some other way.

[louisbyear2-project3]

BUTTON

Right now this button does nothing other than press down but it will soon turn into a security system.

[louisbyear2-project3]

Working on Glass Selection

This code is to highlight the glass when selecting it, the specific glasses have different numbers. The pint glass is 0, the half pint glass is 1 and the shot glass is 2, so when you go right you +1 and when you go left you -1.

This is for selecting the glasses, when the glass selecting integer is 0 you select the pint glass, when it is 1 you select the half pint glass and when the integer is 2 you select the shot glass.

[louisbyear2-project3]

Developing the Beer Tap

(I couldn't post this on the last post so this post is to just show what the beer tap looks like now).