#aint207

[ravenjick-blog]

The Search For Enlightenment

With this blog, I aim to develop over time an exploration-based Unity game called The Search For Enlightenment. With each new iteration of the game, and with each new mechanic added, I shall update accordingly here. This is not just a piece of referred coursework, but an attempt to create something more nuanced, detailed and design-based than any of my previous work. This is a game that I am interested in making for myself, and not to satisfy a lecturer. This game is the first true work that I will have made as an independent developer. I hope that it can live up to my expectations, and that I can make something that I am genuinely proud of. As part of the initial period, where this game shall be assessed, I am obligated to split the development process into three distinct categories: concept, design and implementation. The first shall show my thoughts leading up to creating the game, its scope and meaning, and how I approach making a game. The second deals with the content of the game itself - the look, feel, sound, and so on; it shall document how and why each consistent part of the game is there. The third deals, simply, with the code behind the gameplay mechanics I shall include. My assessment for the initial prototype shall include a trailer, to be posted when the game is relatively complete, as well as a help screen and some kind of scoreboard. As this is an excercise in design and creativity, the scoreboard shall simply be the amount of time one takes to complete the game. I imagine that it shall take a player roughly ten minutes to complete, if all goes well. In the next update, I shall begin with the concept stage of development.

[hivemindindustries-blog]

One final update

It’s been a while since I talked about Phaser, what with the completely catastrophic failure of my original idea, In the end, I just followed a tutorial for making Flappy Bird and changed a few of the assets, added game modes, and refactored what I had when I discovered it wouldn’t work properly to work with require.js. At this point, Phaser is just a nightmare. I’m glad that with this final update on the matter and the submission being around the corner, I can forget it ever happened. So, onto the business of what the game now is. I had the idea of changing Flappy Bird, a simple and relatively easy-to-implement game, to include elements of 2048. The square or cube you’d play as would go through one of two checkpoints in lieu of the usual pipes, doubling the score if the player chose the right one (or causing a game over if not). This, however, seemed too complicated for me to include having just overscoped and completely failed at my previous game. Instead, I have included three game modes for the original Flappy Bird, where pipes and gravity increase as the difficulty goes up. As this was a design-based module, I also edited some of the assets so that the game isn’t just the same thing over and over again. When the score for a gamemode is recorded, the game gives the player a chance to go to one of the other modes if desired. Here’s a few pictures of the Phaser game in its final format. Although it was just tutorial-following and a little bit of code refactoring, I’m far more happy that I got something working completed in time for the submission than something that completely failed in every single respect. I can now completely forget about this module, and move on to greener pastures. With this submission, the second year has officially ended and I can completely focus on a possible placement, one exam in the summer, and my final year project. This blog post also marks the end of HiveMind Industries. I have decided that if I am to be serious about what I want to create, and I want to make something that is truly excellent, this blog with all my previous, pitiful failings is not something I want kicking around. Good bye, coursemates and followers. It’s been fun, and I’ll still be around, but it is, as they say, it. Best wishes to all. -The HiveMind Boffin

[hivemindindustries-blog]

Nope.

I spent eight hours trying to figure stuff out for Phaser last night. EIGHT. HOURS. I’ve just finished completely scrapping the project, which I’ve wasted so much time on, in liew of something - anything - else. There was no miracle cure for changing layers, and there was no possible way for the game to work as intended without it. A simple, boring puzzle room platformer with no novel mechanics would have been a complete pain to make in Phaser, a basic knock-off of my previous Stencyl iteration, and, essentially, a full waste of time. I think it may just be me being bad at JavaScript, but Phaser doesn’t seem to like giving many errors or working with something in an intuitive way. At least with C#, Unity and VIsual Studio I know exactly what has gone wrong and where. But I’ve trawled stackoverflow for hours, searching for something that might even slightly allow a player to remain instantiated with an inventory across two layers, allowing the player to actually see the avatar they’re controlling, and getting it to interact with anything on that second layer at all.  The player still hits walls on layer one, isn’t visible, doesn’t instantiate properly, has no animations or sprtes working on the second layer, and simply Will. Not. Work. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do now, bearing in mind I have about seven weeks left to figure something out that works as well as intended, but I think I might just go back to the drawing board and make something that does. I’ve left everything from this project still in the repository I will be submitting, so in case it was something completely simple and obvious that I’ve spent eight solid hours trying to fix, at least whoever marks the work can see it for what it is. Hopefully this documentation will still get a few marks, but I’ve now accepted that I don’t think I’m going to be able to pass this module.

[hivemindindustries-blog]

Player movement

Player movement now works along the four main axes (this code’s similar for all four, so I’ve just included left in the image), but there is still the issue of layer-switching that I cannot seem to solve for the life of me. I tried destroying the player and instantiating it on the second layer, but then the player image won’t show up at all, or it won’t appear on-screen. Let this be a lesson in massively, massively overscoping a project. And with the deadline coming closer, there is no way without a miracle that I can get this game even slightly working. I haven’t even finished testing the first level yet! Hopefully I can get a solution before March rolls around, but if not then I think it’s back to the drawing board.

[hivemindindustries-blog]

First code

Since brackets decided not to work properly for this update, the source code looks a bit rubbish. Anyway, this is supposed to demo the primary form of world-based interaction in the game: layer-switching. It somewhat works properly, but because both layers are relatively similar there’s no real gameplay yet. In addition, setting collisions for absolutely everything in the level and all the tilesets takes a huge amount of time. I may have to try and figure out a better way of getting everything loaded in properly. If I’m lucky I’ll be able to successfully load the player in, too, although it seems as though even if the player is loaded in, they can’t actively move between layers! This is a major, major issue, and if I can’t figure out something that might help matters then I might have to rethink my idea entirely. I’m worried that if I can’t get this solved then I won’t have enough time to get something else reasonably polished before the deadline comes around, especially since the assignment specification is fully expecting a complete game.

[hivemindindustries-blog]

First level ideas

So here’s a look at the first few levels. The player should be given the option, later in the game, to revisit some of the earlier tutorial-style levels, so that hidden clues, easter-eggs and items can be picked up. Since the game is supposed to be about moral choice, this should give a nice touch to the game for those who are genuinely interested in the lore, and aren’t just playing for the sake of completion. Eventually, as shown in the level design post, there should be a number of different endings depending on the moral choices of the player. But for now, the first few levels are relatively simple. I can think up the rest as I go along; cluttering up this blog with every single level idea would take forever and be very boring. Apologies for the rushed handwriting - I was in a flow.

[hivemindindustries-blog]

Menu concept

Having brainstormed the menu system, I thought I’d also include my initial ideas for the main menu. The general concept is basically the same as for the Stencyl game, but I’ll explain what’s going on here anyway. The player is presented with a main menu, where thy can play, load, exit or see credits (as well as check out this blog). 

On clicking play, the player is sent to the level screen, where they can see the eventual layout of the facility. More levels are unlocked as the player continues through. Before starting I’d also want to include a page to explain mechanics, lore and so on. If the player loads, then they can pick from any level or room they’ve previously been to. Next time I’ll be taking a look at the design for the first few levels. Before I forget, I’ve also included require.js as part of the Phaser framework I’ll be using. It should mean that the instantiating of the entire game is much easier, and will make some of the code look a tiny bit neater. Apparently it saves time coding too, which is quite cool.

[hivemindindustries-blog]

Starting Off

So, with this new project, I’m planning on using the assets I spent months working on last year to my advantage, changing things around and adding in new mechanics and assets as needed. This way, I have a number of things that can already be tested with, and I don’t have to worry about cloning something else for test purposes. It also means I get a decent feel for what the game might be like by the end of play. Another idea would be a morality-based choice system. In the last game, the issue of choice for the first six levels was never implemented due to time constraints - originally I wanted the player to be able to go through a number of different rooms depending on which choices they made over the trustworthiness of the narrator, the best direction to go from a ultilitarian perspective, and the discovery of various clues and items. To that end, I’ve included here a rough concept of how I would like some of the levels to be organised. I know that by the end of this module, the entire game will probably end up being much less than this, but as a general endgame I’m including it anyway.