MONTH 1: GAME DESIGN PREPRODUCTION
MILESTONE 1 - PROTOTYPING
I approached this milestone with the mindset of wanting to quickly establish some form of functionality while still incorporating everyone’s ideas into the game. This way we could quickly see what could work from our previous "pre-prototype" and what needed to be cut for this milestone and the next.
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For just a little bit of insight into what we had during our "pre-prototype" stage, we began building the game with three pillars in mind: Exploring, Puzzles, and Treasures. We had the player move forward/backward with the "W" and "S" key, and rotate with the "A" and "D" keys which felt a bit unnatural, and also added the option to jump with the "Space" key so that the player could get through some puzzles. The player was also able to use a dodge feature and had a baton to strike doors that were considered breakable in order to get through the level.
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The levels had a variety of enemies like floating spinning robots that moved from one point to the other without any aggro, some wall spikes, and some fire hazards to make things a bit more challenging. It also had some placeholders for health packs and an area that boosted the player's dodge mechanic. All in all, it was a very solid functional level which served us as a framework for the game development journey that we were about to embark on.
For Milestone 1, we decided to move in a different direction with our pillars by changing them to exploring, looting, and survival/combat. The previous ones simply didn't mesh well and it didn't scream out "fun". We also decided to stop development on some of our initial mechanics like dodge, jump, and the melee weapon that was being used to break doors.
The prototype level itself had to have a complete game loop so we added the Main Menu, Pause Menu, and Credits section. To test the mechanics that we were about to implement, we created a metrics scene that will include all the features that were being added.
I had an idea to revamp the player movement so that it felt a lot more natural, I changed it so that the player could move both horizontally and vertically with the WASD keys and rotate on its axis with the mouse. This felt a lot more fluid and familiar.
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My teammates added an SMG as the main weapon which could shoot fairly quickly and cause the health bar to decline in strange increments. The main weapons shot base projectiles but the behavior of the weapon would change when the player picked up different ammo types. Once acquired, a specific type of ammunition was picked up, and then the main weapon would take on this attribute until the capacity would run out (X amount of shots per specific ammo). Placeholder dummy enemies added so we could test the weapons out.
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We then felt like our levels needed some sort of challenge so I created some spike traps that damaged the player upon activation while my teammates made an immobilization trap that would disable the player's movement for a short period of time. AI enemies were added in the mix to challenge and threaten the player. We gave them multiple behaviors so that some of them would patrol in between certain points and aggro when the player was in range.
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My team also added a treasure/loot in the form of a chest/box. The loot would pop out of the box for the player to pick up once the proper key was used. We then implemented an inventory system that would hold the equipped ammunition, health item, and a slot for the keys that were used to open the treasure chests.
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Once the above placeholders were in place and at least functional, I added SFX and background music for user feedback along with their sliders to they could be adjusted from within the options menu. Audio effects were added to the menu selection changing/confirmation, background music, player actions (jump, pick up, etc), and to some environmental elements.
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Closing out this Milestone, I met with the team so we could go over what we had and to get them to start thinking about what kind of game we wanted to create. I encouraged everyone to share their favorite games and what about that game made it fun. We had a few brainstorm sessions throughout the week so we could begin conceptualizing some sort of story along with some game references that would help get us closer to developing a very fun and engaging game. I believe this shift toward a freely creative focus helped reinvigorate the team’s approach when entering Milestone 2.
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KEY THINGS I WORKED ON THIS MILESTONE:
Scripting Player Movement that allows the Player character to move forward/backward and rotate all with the WASD keys.
Scripted spike traps
Scripted the game's sound manager and Unity's Audio Mixer
Scripted Player Avatar stats that include jump height, speed, acceleration, and jump distance