All in, I think we’ve managed to create a somewhat unique, fast paced game that is both enjoyable and has replay-ability. The only real challenges we faced were getting the movement right, creating a 3D character and the camera in the second level. Throughout the course of development we were mostly on track if not for the issues with movement. We communicated and planned effectively throughout the project.
What Went Wrong
Working with the team of Devon Jenkin-Hunt, Owen Bates and Marcus Eley was a fun, stress-free experience. We didn’t scrum as much as we should have but I believe this is mostly down to the fact that we already discussed what we should do next on this project pretty much every second of the day.
In addition to this, we didn’t keep on top of documentation such as burndown charts and productions schedules. We made late changes to the game such as adding an unplanned second game mode and although it made it into the game it is incomplete. Furthermore, recently testing the game, there seems to be some input lag which wasn’t present on other machines so the performance of this game seems to be machine dependable.
Final Thoughts
It would be nice to try and do a project like this in a professional environment so there are no distractions. Although my team were great, they were distracted by other people throughout the course of development. This is understandable given the current circumstance’s. The game itself turned out great and is fun player vs player experience. I think on the next project, I will take the project management more seriously and show true progression throughout the course of the next project.
For the microgame project, I will be working with Devon Hunt [LINK] and Owen Bates [LINK]. To start our project, we started off by making a Trello board and jotting down any ideas we had onto the board. We also researched established minigames or party games such as WarioWare and Mario Party.
After a lengthy discussion, we picked an idea that not only did we think was unique, but could also hit a couple of the stretch goals.
The idea we have went for is essentially a game of tag with a bit of hot potato. The game will feature a multiplayer element where players control a Miner in a race to grab the Steel ingot from the middle of the map, the person who holds the ingot and the most gold at the end of the timer, wins.
With the idea in place, it was time work on our Game Design Document and Asset List.
As project producer, I tasked Owen Bates to create some test levels for our project whilst me and Devon got to work on programming the main mechanics for our game.
Firstly, we looked at the movement script, as this is a core mechanic. Now what’s interesting with our idea is that we want two individual inputs, a controller input where the controller is shared and another with a single keyboard but using different keys.
Once we had the inputs configured it was time to program it into script. Following basic code, we were able to program the inputs for movement on the X axis. The part of the code we struggled with was the jumping, for some reason or other, Unity wasn’t recognising triggers and collisions and so we had to improvise. For this to work we had to configure our characters with a head component and foot component.
Alright, finally the triggers started working, this meant we were able to code further, upon the player collecting a steel bar, the bar will disappear and a bool would trigger to say that player X would hold the steel bar, if Player Y jumped on Player X head, the bar would then belong to Player Y. It was crucial that we balanced the game, so the bar holder would also see a speed decrease to allow the other player to be able to catch them.
Next it was time to add some UI elements. I added a scoreboard for Player 1 and Player 2 and then I added timer. I made it so that every coin is equivalent to 10 points and the bar was equivalent to 50 points. I also made it so that once the bar had swapped hands, the score would decrease for Player X and increase for Player Y and vice versa.
Following on from this, I also added a graphic next to the players score to indicate who was currently holding the bar.
Up next, we had to look at camera movement, we wanted a smash bros. camera style movement. For this, I had to look at a tutorial, so I went to Brackeys and he had the perfect tutorial for our camera movement.
Essentially what this camera does is, it gets the position of multiple targets and stays in the middle of them both. It also zooms in closer as the followed targets get closer together and zooms out the further they are apart.
At this point, Marcus joined our team, I tasked him with creating 3D models for our game. So far he has made a chest, rocks with gems, a doorframe, and a minecart, however they are lacking textures, so will mention this in the next scrum. For now, have used unity materials in its place. I created a set of rails in Unity and set it as a prefab for easy placement.
Doorframe designed by Marcus
Minecart designed by Marcus
Rails designed by me
Owen had uploaded his levels via Unity Teams so I was able to test them out with the character movement, after much trial and error, we finally got our characters moving in a way we were happy with and a nice feeling jump to boot. Owen also made some moving platforms for our game however, the player wouldn’t stick to the platforms. This was easily solved via a trigger method and setting the player as a child of that object.
Effectively this is it, this is our game made, bar a main menu and game over screen, we are ready to start adding art assets to our game. For our level we were looking at cave-like assets and dirt textures. As we are going for a low poly focus, it was crucial our textures followed the same style.
Texture for the platforms and Ella Vaders. Inspired by Super Mario 64.
It was time to start looking at sound effects and background music whilst Devon got to work on the menu and death screen for our game. For the music or sound effects I will look at using Acoustica Mixcraft or Apple Garageband. These two software’s are DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) that allow you to use royalty free loops or use virtual instruments to create individual music and sounds.
For sound effects, I headed over to mixkit. From here I was able to grab a coin collect sound effect, a collection sound for the steel bar and a jump sound effect.
With the title and end screen, I assisted Devon with some UI additions and coding for the end screen. Although we didn’t need it, we had extra time to create a 2nd game mode.
I made a game selection screen that featured two images and a how to play button covering both controls and objectives. Within the 2nd game mode, Owen Bates once again made the level and it is timed for 20 seconds. The objective is to race to the top without being caught in the lava. As this is still a relatively new game mode, we are still trying to balance the game so that it is completable with plenty of time remaining.
Existing measures we’ve taken include shortening the level and decreasing the lava rise time. It is still fairly tight to complete but it is doable. Also an issue we came across is that the camera we used from Brackeys tutorial doesn’t work well with our game if the player is killed by lava.
As the camera rely’s on tracking two targets, if a target is destroyed, the camera script doesn’t reduce the list of targets, thus creating a static camera causing the alive player to not be seen on screen. We need to find a way to say if this player is destroyed, then reduce the targets to track to 1.
We could just end the game when a player is killed which would be a lot easier but from a players POV, it’s also a cheap death so watching the other player try to complete it is a benefit as it isn’t the easiest of game modes and is fairly challenging.
All in, I think we’ve managed to create a somewhat unique, fast paced game that is both enjoyable and replayable. The only real challenges we faced were getting the movement right, creating a 3D character and the camera in the second level.
Working with the team of Devon Jenkin-Hunt, Owen Bates and Marcus Eley was a fun, stress-free experience. We didn’t scrum as much as we should have but I believe this is mostly down to the fact that we already discussed what we should do next on this project pretty much every second of the day.
It would be nice to try and do a project like this in a professional environment so there are no distractions. Although my team were great, they were distracted by other people throughout the course of development. This is understandable given the current circumstance’s.
JORDAN | GLITCH ARCADE 
