Shutterbug

Devblog for Shutterbug!

[shutterbugdev]

Shutterbug | Update 6

Development Duration: 06/04/20 - 17/04/20

Couple of things this sprint - firstly i’m going to upload some screenshots of the evidence photos and the cryptid photo ending up in the handbook!

Assets

In order to improve the look of the game, I have put together some scenes with premade assets. I really like how these models fit with the theme of the game!

[shutterbugdev]

Shutterbug | Update 5

Development Duration: 23/03/20 - 01/04/20

This sprint I have been mainly concentrating on the handbook and how information is displayed on it.

Redesign

First up I redesigned the book itself - this also meant I had to convert my current 3d book object into a UI element! This might cause the book to feel less like part of the world, but it sure does make it easier to make assets for it. Here’s a GIF of what I have so far!

Filling in Data

As you might be able to tell from the template above, there’s spots for your photos to go! When to take a good photo of the cryptid, that greyed out icon of mosstop will be filled in with your very own snapshot. Likewise the evidence photos will also be filled in as you get good pictures.

[shutterbugdev]

Shutterbug | Update 4

Development Duration: 09/03/20 - 20/03/20

Been a wild two weeks huh! We’ve come to the end of what I had planned to be my minimum viable product, but because of all the disruption I definitely haven’t got the game quite to the point I wanted to.

Excuses aside, what have I actually done?

Learning Cryptid Information

This has been the main job this sprint as it had a ton of different elements to it! I’ll go into each a little bit here, and then include a video at the bottom.

Flee Count

Each cryptid has a certain number of times that they can flee before they leave the area permanently. This counter can be seen ticking up in the handbook and then if you hit the maximum, this is a piece of information which can be learned and will be displayed in the guide book.

Preferred Spawns

Each cryptid also now has specific regions that they prefer to be in. This will influence where they appear once you have taken enough pictures of evidence. The evidence will also tend to be concentrated around where they like to spawn. If you take a picture of a cryptid in an area, you learn that it likes to be in this area and is likely to spawn there again. This information will be found in the handbook for future reference from this point onward.

There have also been a handful of bug fixes and small changes with how I am storing data about all this content.

[shutterbugdev]

Shutterbug | Update 3

Development Duration: 24/02/20 - 06/03/20

Half way through the minimum viable product and everything is starting to feel like it’s coming together!

Environment

I’ve been suffering with an unhelpful prototyping area for too long, it’s time to make some assets!

Here’s a little sample of the ones I’ve made so far. I did a bit of experimenting with different styles and this low-poly with pixel art textures is what I landed on. I also built out a level using a combination of these assets and blocked out shapes, but in a more sensible layout.

Proof System

Up to this point the game has been a case of tracking down the cryptid in the world, taking a picture of them, and repeating this process. I have been trying to work out how I want to add another layer of depth to the game and my solution has been the proof system.

In order to get the cryptid to spawn (and to make your sightings believable) you will need to first find appropriate proof and photograph that. Eventually this will prompt the cryptid to spawn in the world. You then need to find the cryptid, take your photo and submit it alongside your proof. I’ve made a video of this process (note the green blobs are proof for mosstop, they will be proper assets eventually!)

Handbook

The handbook will be where all your cryptid information is kept. I added a little sliding panel this week, but fully intend to change the visuals here and the content as I add  more data to be learned about each cryptid.

This sprint there’s also been a fair few bug fixes and other small tweaks.

Onto the next!

[shutterbugdev]

Shutterbug | Update 2

Development Duration: 03/02/20 - 21/02/20

The end of the prototype phase! Seems to have come round very quickly... 

Anyway, let’s get into some new features.

Stealth

The main focus for this second sprint was getting in a full (if scruffy) gameplay loop. That meant finally getting to work on the stealth system which is going to be a pretty big part of the final product.

It’s based off a whole load of different factors, with various modifiers affecting both the player stealth value and the cryptids perception value. These are things like player speed, whether the player is crouching or sprinting, distance from the cryptid, line of sight, as well as a base level perception value which will be different for each creature. 

Hand In Screen

Once you’ve snapped as many photos as your camera can handle (5...) - you’re going to need to sort through them and make sure you only submit your absolute best work. To do this, I put together a nice tabletop scene where you can choose which are your best shots.

Scoring

As you might have spotted at the end of that last video, the photos are now scored too! Currently the only real stat is whether or not the cryptid was in the photograph...all the others are just made up (don’t tell anyone). As the game progresses it is nice and easy for me to add any number of exciting modifiers, so that scoring the photos will be really interesting.

High Score

And last but not least, to round out the gameplay loop you can now see your highest scoring photo and the score associated with it on the main menu. Eventually you’ll be able to flip through the book and see your high scores for each different cryptid!

That’s all for now, until next time!

[shutterbugdev]

Shutterbug | Update 1

Development Duration: 20/01/20 - 31/01/20

So this is it! The first one! I guess starting with a quick introduction might be a good idea. This is going to be a development blog for my newest game, Shutterbug.

It’s going to be a cryptid photography game, where you play as a freelance photographer trying to hit it big with photos of creatures that are “not real” and “a waste of good film”.

Visual Research

I had a couple of different art styles that I wanted to play around with, so the first step was to get some mood boards made and figure out what I liked! The results of this research was that I wanted my cryptid to be billboard pixel art sprites, and all the environment be low poly models with pixel art textures! 

This is my first cryptid, his name is Moss-top!

Test Scene

Next up was to get this little guy into unity, so I put together a test scene and started on a billboard script. It allowed Moss-top to have an actual direction, and I could switch between front and back sprites as necessary.

I also worked on the ability for Moss-top to move around a bit! He can switch between a handful of different locations with sliding transition animations.

As you might also be able to see here - the early workings of a camera are in place! It can’t actually save any pictures yet, but it’s looking promising.

Cryptid Selection

Eventually i’m going to need to select which cryptid we want to track, so here’s a quick prototype for what that screen might look like! Imagine the game title in that white square on the front...

Overview

So that’s about it for the first week - there’s a couple other bits and pieces, but I think this post is more than long enough! Note in the video that new camera model which I totally forgot you’d only see a tiny part of...

Anyway, until next week!