Development Log #1

Welcome Back, Everyone!

---

MAIN CONCEPT

To start off I would like to go over the brief concept as to what my team is doing over the course of our project. So, the first thing that is very important to our game is the main component which is the idea of game jams/levels. We have thought of the idea for the player to jump through different types of levels as you progress and collect special hidden “Easter Eggs”. There are two types of “levels” that you will encounter and those are “Level Jams” and “Minigames”.

LEVEL JAMS:

---

These are the main component of the project and will show new styles, genres, and inputs for the player. These are going to be theme related and we will focus more of our time with this aspect in our project. The idea is to take a theme and develop a specific game with its own components and unique feature(s). You must venture through each of these levels as the main character and collect special “Easter Eggs” in which will unlock the last portion of the game. Even if you fail to complete the special parts of each level you will be forced to continue. This will allow the player to make mistakes and allow for a challenging way collect all “Easter Eggs”.

MINI-GAMES:

---

These games are going to be sixty-seconds in length with a specific goal and “Easter Egg” found within. Same as the “Level Jams” even if you fail the minigame you will be forced to continue. We plan to have more of these instead of “Level Jams” due to the amount of time and complexity we will spend on these.

LOOP Example (Can be Random)

---

LJ = Level Jam MG = Minigame F = Final

LJ -> MG -> MG -> LJ -> MG -> LJ -> MG -> MG -> F

WEEK 2

For this week we decided to develop a “Minigame” and tackle a “Level Jam” the next. I am going to show my progress and what happened each week in a different style throughout the rest of the Devlogs.

During the beginning of each week of our mini-games/level jams, we find a theme for the other member and start the brainstorming process. This week my theme was decay.

THEME – DECAY

IDEA

There were many ideas that came to mind but the one I settled on was to create a grabber game in a dark room which had a conveyor. Because the theme leaned towards the creepy side of things I wanted the area to feel like that too. Like an assembly line you must pick up apples and check if it’s bad or good. If a good apple goes through all the way it increments a good apple counter and vice versa for the bad ones. Depending on the number of each apples you have will determine if you won.

Example

23 Good Apples vs. 12 Bad Apples = WIN

23 Good Apples vs. 12 Bad Apples = LOSE

The core mechanic is to pick up an apple and to check the apple by rotation and see if there are any “decay/rotten” parts on it. As the game continues so does the speed of the conveyor and the frequent spawning of the apples, more bad ones than good ones. This was the main idea and I decided to start developing.

PROGRESS

The first thing that I began to work on was the conveyor belt and getting it to move. My first initial approach was to just take a rectangle and move it towards the ones in front of it. This was done in a list and it would cycle through and get the next location of the rectangle in front of the current one and translate the current location to it. After doing some research I found an easier solution! It used a rigid body instead and I used the moving of the rectangles as an animation instead.

CONVEYOR MECHANICS

After completing the conveyor belt functionality, I worked on the visuals within the scene and the objects that would fit the theme decay. The object that I chose were apples. I made a spawn location and had a check for a random timer that would spawn them. This random timer would decrease as the game progressed. I used two prefabs to show the difference to a “good” apple and a “bad” one. I will update the assets next semester during the polishing stage but for now I whipped up each model with Unity’s 3D assets.

After sometime of developing I implemented an inspection stage. This would allow the player to highlight an apple and bring it to a closer point to the camera.

Due to this week being a minigame I didn't have much time to implement everything that I wanted for the inspection process. For now you can select if it looks good or bad.

INSPECTION

I ran into some bugs while trying to increase the odds of good apples to bad apples but soon realized what I was missing. After a week of designing the level and some more coding we had a UI that shows you how much time is remaining, an assembly line scene and a score that is displayed after the player’s time is up.

SPAWNING OF THE APPLES - BUG!!

Implementations for Later

When we get to the polishing stage, I want to allow the player to rotate the apple in the inspector. I also want to update the visuals and use a better input system for managing the inputs from the player.

Enjoying This DevLog Series?

Stay tune for next week! We start our first Level Jam!

See you next time!

---