P4

My role was Game Designer
My secondary role was Programmer

Diary

September 19th 2018

On this day, I created a Google Drive and a Trello page to help organise all of our work:

This helped keep all of the teams work organised and through the Trello page we could set roles for each individual.

September 26th 2018

On this day, I helped come up with two basic ideas for the game. I wrote these two summary sentences:

“Catch the pigeon; avoid obstacles like Geometry Dash; earn experience points to level up; ‘Code Runner’.”

“Inspired by Meet Joe Black; play as the reaper in an adventure with someone who has 4 days to live; and make friends with them along the way; ‘Night Reaper’.”

This then led to me doing some research on other games, and what makes them so popular:

Temple Run

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPMIQobB3ZM

Geometry Dash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k90y6PIzIaE

Crossy Road

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3pTw0jmxlg

October 3rd 2018

On this day, I continued my game research, and helped on the Treatment. I created a core mechanic diagram:

Researching the Target Audience:

And soundtrack:

I then helped the team work on the icons and characters in the game. There were a few designs, but we then decided on this eagle design:

The design was well detailed and well drawn by our Artist, however, I said that when we create our animation, it will be difficult due to the amount of pixels on the bird. To resolve this, I helped the Artist create a new design will less pixels, and together we created this:

After being happy with the look of the main character, we went ahead and started to design the Magpie:

The rest of the assets were all handled by the Artist, who I closely worked with throughout production to make sure the game looked like how I wanted from the planning.

October 10th 2018

On this day, we started to learn how Unity works. I took role as Game Designer, therefore I was not expected to be in control of the game creation. However, due to lack of attendance from others in the group, I took role as Assistant Producer, and opened Unity on my computer. I followed a couple of tutorials online to help get me started.

- Became assistant producer

Due to our producer not being able to attend the lessons, I had to take over and control what we do each lesson. At the start of each lesson, I would give intructions to that person for their individual role, or taking someone elses role. I set up a Trello account with a list to do to help with this, and this helped organised who has done what and how much we have left to do:

October 17th 2018

On this day, I helped come up with some concept art for the game. Others in the team had created icons and character designs for the eagle and magpie. I took their designs and this is what I created:

I was happy with this design, and from here the game was primarily focused on looking like this image.

October 24th 2018

On this day, we started making the Unity game. I took the role as assistant producer, programmer and game designer.

I opened up Unity, and dragged in our background, along with the eagle design:

October 31 2018

On this day, I started working on programming the bird so that it would flap when pressing the space bar. This was difficult, as I had never done programming before. I did hours of research online to help get the bird to have gravity on it so that it would flap like the game 'Flappy Bird'. I wrote a basic code, but unfortunately this did not work:

November 7th 2018

I continued working on getting the bird to flap, again writing another script, which did not work. I struggled to find a workable solution, and was worrying for the team. The producer briefly couldn't attend, therefore I was in charge of this situation. I took charge and did hours of outside of college hours, where I looked in detail at tutorials online of how to code.

November 14th 2018

On this day, I wrote another script which worked and the bird was now flapping by pressing the space bar. Here is the working flapping code:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class Bird : MonoBehaviour {
    // Movement speed
    public float speed = 2;
    
    // Flap force
    public float force = 300;

    // Use this for initialization
    void Start () {    
        // Fly towards the right
        GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>().velocity = Vector2.right * speed;
    }
    
    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update () {
        // Flap
        if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Space))
            GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>().AddForce(Vector2.up * force);
    }
}

November 21 2018
After finally getting the bird to flap and interact with the world, I continued programming the game, creating relevant folders such as Art, Scripts and Sprites.

November 28th 2018
Having been given the basic mechanics or the bird, I thought I would work on the main menu of the game, as other members in the group worked on tidying up the Unity file to make it organised and finding out more information on what to code next.

I created this menu below:

Which had its own scene called 'Menu'.

To create the menu, I used a unity feature called 'Buttons' where you can drag in a button, put text on it, and tell the button to open a scene or another menu when clicked on. I discovered how to do this through an online tutorial. The background was made from the artist, who did a good job with the amount of detail shown.

Here is the code for the buttons, and the relevant settings inside Unity:

The main menu works with the buttons taking you to different parts. For example:

Start > Main game starts

Options > Options menu opens (ability to go back and change volume)

Quit > Quits the game

December 5th 2018
On this day, I started working on Animations for the Eagle, so that when your playing the game its wings are flapping up and down. To do this, I made a sprite sheet:

And cut out each sprite, within Unity, to seperate out each frame of animation like so:

December 12th 2018
I continued on the animation:

And now when you press play, the bird flaps in the game.

I attempted to write a background scrolling script, but this did not work unfortunately.

December 19th 2018
Now I worked on the death of the Eagle in the game. To do this, I created a 'Ground' element in the game. Firstly however, I had to create a 'Game Manager' script, which manages everything in the game.

Here is the Ground element:

I then created a 'PlayerController' script which helped manage the death system in the game. This is also where my flap code is. I successfuly managed to make a public element of the mechanics of the bird:

January 9th 2019
Now I worked closer at the animation, as it has now stopped working for some reason. I realised that I accidently deleted the animation code when transferring over the code to the new PlayerController script. I will now put the animation part in the script:

Janurary 16th 2019
I will now make the camera follow the bird when flapping. To do this I created a camera script:

This allowed the camera to follow the bird at all times.

January 23rd 2019
So far I have created a basic mechanic where the bird flaps, a following camera, animation and a basic menu. I am happy with my progress so far, but unfortunately my bird flapping mechanic has stopped working. To fix this, I have now tweaked the code slightly, which has fixed the problem. This was because of the animator code not working properly. I have fixed it as shown:

January 30th 2019
Now I am going to work on the death of the main character, and so that the game restarts afterwards:

As you can see, I have merged with the Game Manager Script and the Player Controller script. I created the killbox tag, which I applied to a 2D box layer, to cause the script to start and the player to die, and go back to the start.

February 6th 2019
Now I started working on a high score and score system into the game. I found this difficult, as I tried multiple times with failed attempts. However, I finally got the score manager to work so that it increases as the player goes along the level.

Here is the script, which I spend hours in my own time coding and getting it to work correctly. I am happy with the result.

February 13th 2019
I now started working on putting coins in the game. Here is the script (Updated as of May 2019 due to future sound issues)

When picking up a coin, the game successfully adds 10 points to the players score.

February 20th 2019
I worked with the artist at creating a new coin, and we both came up with this design, which I replaced with my current coins:

February 27th 2019
After the great progress on our game so far, I had a conversation with the Game Artist, who said that we should split the level up into two sections. I agreed, and he got to work at creating a new background for the level. This is what we created:

The game now starts in a forest, and leads inside a cave.

March 6th 2019
I now worked at creating an after death menu. This was important, as this gave the player the option to restart or quit the game. Here is the completed death menu script:

March 13th 2019
I created a pause menu too:

Here is the script:

March 20th 2019
I now worked at adding sound effects to the game, here is what I did.

Firstly, I forged the sound effects off copyright free websites and put them into Unity.

One of the sounds is my voice saying 'Start' which plays when you start the game.

To create this, I recorded my voice, and added some effects in audition to make it sound more robotic:

March 27th 2019
I then added the sound effects in the scripts. So when the bird flaps, a flap sound is played. Here is an example:

April 3rd 2019
I now started adding in obstacles in the game, for example, we had created rock assets and tree stumps. I worked with the game artist to create these, making sure they fit in with the look of the game. We came up with these:

April 10th 2019
I put these assests into the game like so:

April 17th 2019
I added box colliders over each of the stumps, rocks and clouds to make sure the player dies when hitting these objects:

April 24th 2019
On this day, I worked on the end of the level. I then came up with the idea that the bird should land on the nest at the end to finish the game. I told the game artist to create a big nest and he came up with this:

I then put it at the end of the level, along with a level complete menu, as shown below:

May 1st 2019
I now worked on a splash screen, so that when the game loads up, the logo Enter The Nest comes up. Here is what the end result and script looked like: