Unity tutorial 05

I am now at a stage where I am beginning to understand a lot more of the unity terms mentioned and work through the tutorials a bit faster.

 

This week’s lesson ended by completing all the basic functionality steps of the game.

I learnt how to make the background continually repeat to give the illusion of an endless background in the game by using the box collider, I recapped my skills on destroying obstacles as they appear offscreen. I learnt a new skill called script communication, which involved linking scripts and variables together to control certain states of the game. 

 

I did find this tutorial a bit more difficult that past unity tutorials, this is because there was a slot of new terminology involved, such as linking scripts and naming game objects, with each tutorial I find myself going back and making notes of the new key terms to adding them to my knowledge for next week’s tutorial.

 

Something I liked about this unity is that I can really see my game development stills starting to come together, and now that I have a solid idea for my game, I am finding the unity tutorials to be very useful, I also have made notes on certain sections of the tutorial that will be useful for certain section of my own personal game for when I start Developing it.

Source: screenshot from unity workhub

Unity Tutorial 04

This week’s unity tutorial involved building on last week’s tutorials and learning a new skillset in a new unit. I learnt about making items collide into one another by adding a component called a “box collider” I learnt more about game making and making the game appear smooth, I learnt how to make a background environment continuously move in a game, this will be a useful tool for myself when it comes to creating my own game later on in the module.

 

I learnt about the spawn tool and how it can prove useful for game design, the ability to have an object or obstacle repeat at random intervals is an important aspect for game design, especially for the player.

 

There was a challenge assigned for this week “challenge 2” was a recap challenge and it involved editing a given game file with faults, some of these faults included editing the spawn manager, adding in ridged bodies and colliders and destroying items as they appear off screen 

 

As the weeks progress, I’m beginning to find that I can work through the unity tutorials a little bit faster, I’m beginning to understand many of the terms and inputs required for basic game rules which I find very useful. Also, since I have a good idea of what I would like my game to be, I am able to make notes of certain aspects in the learning tutorials that would be beneficial 

source: Screenshot from Unity workhub

Game Design Document for Flying Bird

This week I created a Game Design document outlining the details of the game I am going to create. 

it provides all the details of the game including how it will be made and specific features of the game.

The link to the game can be found below 

Game Design Document

source: photoshopped artwork created for game world.

Game Vision Statement

Flying Bird

Game vision statement 

The purpose of this document it to outline the plan for the upcoming game that I will be designing for this module, this document will provide a detailed outline of what is involved in the game, the game description and genre, concept art, information on how the game will be made, resources used, recommended platforms and a brief outline of my current game design skills.

Introduction:

“Can You make it through the Concrete City?”

Flying bird is the latest immersive platformer game, fly high through a city of skyscrapers of different lengths dodging the buildings as the game proceeds as you build your high score.

 

Description /Game Play 

you will enter the world as a bird, you will be playing the game in a city simulated environment, there are buildings, skyscraper of various heights and width, your objective? Keep flying, keep flying through the world and avoiding the buildings, as you continue flying and as you pick up points you also pick up in speed, this new speed obstacle may make it difficult for you to progress. What happens if you crash? Then you start again from the original starting point, that’s as simple as it is, your aims and objectives of the game is to keep flying whilst increasing in speed and increasing your high score and flight time with each game. 

Game genre –  

Flying Bird is a platformer game, this game is heavily inspired from the original platformer game “Flappy Bird” the genre of platformer allowes the player to control a character whilst moving through a world, in this case we will be controlling an animal/ a bird flying through tall buildings in a city. The purpose of a platformer game is to conquer the obstacles, earn points and build on scores.

This game style originates in the early 1980s, this platformer games consists of  4 main characteristics, these include an interactive environment, a third person perspective, vertical and horizontal movement, and controlled jumping. 

 

Platforms

This game will be mainly designed for a desktop or computer platform. I would like for this game to be used on mobile devices but due to my limited skills in game design, it will be designed for a desktop.

Conceptual Art 

Below have some rough mock-ups displaying how I would like my game to appear, I have the flying bird asset which can be bought from the unity asset shop, and I also have an image of an animated city skyline which I have Photoshopped the 3D bird onto, these design mock-ups best represents how the game will turn out.

source: photoshopped image of ideal game world

Resources required

In order to create this game, I will be using the unity hub, however as I am still in the early stages of game development, I will have to complete more unity tutorials in order to build my skills and understanding of game design.

Unity- links to create a platformer game 

This source that I found on unity provides a guideline how to complete a 2D platformer game, of course in this case the game will be a 3D platformer, but the tutorial still proves useful. I will also be able to buy and create assets for the game on the unity store, these assets will include a city/skyscraper background environment, and 3D- flying bird. This unity tutorial  will be useful as it gives guidelines on creating your own desirable game environment using the Tile map editor, this is essentially an artistic tool which allow users to paint directly in unity and to be able to create vast and complicate tile maps within unity.

 

Conclusion

This vison statement clearly outlines it purpose, which is to create a platformer game called Flying bird. The game will be presented in a third person view and the player will have control of the bird, moving it forwards and backwards and up and down to doge the obstacles. The purpose of the game will be to continue flying until you crash and with each flight you aim to beat your high score. In order for the player to record their high score I will put a timer within the game, so that witch each play the player can see and record their scores. I will create the game environment using the unity software. I feel confident in this game idea so far, I believe that I have the basics skills to create and set up he game environment and as the weeks progress I will gain more skills and become more confident using unity. 

Game Idea Research

 

The Game “flappy Bird” is something that I would like to recreate , however I would recreate this game using a paper plane of some sort and the plane would have to fly though and avoid obstacles similar to that in “Flappy Bird”

Game Mechanics 

Platformer Mechanics 

I’ve chosen to look at platform game mechanics because it aligns with the type of game that I would like to create. Platform games allow the player to control a character in another world, this usually also involves other elements such as conquering obstacles, collecting coins and earning points. There are 4 important features required when it comes to designing a platform game, these can be listen as follows: the game must have an Interactive environment, Third person perspective,(i.e. the player can see the character their controlling in the screen in front of them) Vertical and horizontal movement and controlled jumping.

 

Scoring Mechanics 

Scoring systems are another system in which I wanted to implement my game, as I would like to make my game a neve ending style of game. The main purpose of the game will be to keep playing each time and achieving a higher score than the last time. The scoring mechanism Is a way of measuring success within the game. By having this quantitative scoring system its adds to the enjoyment factor of the game whilst also enhancing the gameplay (Lee et al 2017).

 

Movement Mechanics 

Movement mechanics are important within a game, by impending enough controls the correct amount of movement in a game can help improve the player experience, this video discusses the importance of movement mechanics using the example of tomb raider. It can be seen in the earliest version  of the game when the player is jumping, that it requires more buttons and more inputs in order to jump, such as running building momentum, jumping, then using the hands to pull up over the edge. But in the newest version of tomb raider it is not quite the same , instead of the various inputs that were required to jump in the old game copy, the game developers changed this, instead all you have to do is simply press one button or input and the player will complete the whole processes of jumping , I personally feel that this creates a disconnect between the player and the Gameworld, this shortcut of jumping takes away from some of the fun and reality aspects of the game, it can be concluded that movement in a game is important and this is a game mechanic that I will definitely implement when it comes to designing my game.

source 

Unity Tutorial 03

 

This week’s Unity tutorial involved building and creating a whole new game with completely new assets, the game had a downward Arial facing view and it involved the player moving side to side to avoid moving animal obstacles whilst throwing an object at the animals. This game design was a little bit more complex than the other game completed last week, it required a lot more code that the first game as it had a lot of sections and attributes to it.  

 

I learnt many things in this new tutorial. Firstly, I was able to practice and repeat some of my skills learnt in the last tutorial, such as changing the camera view and moving an object horizontally. I learnt how to reposition objects and players in the game in an accurate way using the x, and y axis tools, I learnt how to resize an object in the game, i.e., to make it bigger or smaller, I learnt how to create code to keep the game play within the designed frame and prevent the player from going out of the boundaries of the game. I learnt about prefabs and how to create one to make an object repeat which is important for this style of game and will also be important when it comes to creating my individual game.

Although I believe that I am getting faster at completing the unity tutorials, I am still finding the understanding part of the code quite hard to grasp , there are a lot of new words and technical terms when it comes to coding that will take some time to learn and get comfortable with. Other than That, I find I exciting to be able to create these game in unity myself and put it into play!

screenshot from my unity programme- Tutorial 03 

Unity Tutorial 02

 

This week’s unity tutorial involved building off the skills that I had learnt from this last week. In this week’s tutorial I learnt how to take control over the vehicle and give it instructions to turn left or right. I learnt more about using the unity interface and about inputs and how they work, for example to allow the vehicle to move left or right, we had to input values which allow the user to make these moves using the left or right arrow keys.

 

The second part of this tutorial was a challenge and involved putting into practice all the skills learn thus far without any instructions, I found this challenge quite useful as it allowed me to really evaluate what I had learnt thus far in unity and what I needed to work on. I still find the coding language quite difficult and technical; I am beginning to understand that when doing the coding part of the game that figures need to be exact otherwise the game will not operate (I learnt this the hard way!)

 but I think that will develop over time, I am a looking forward to working through more tutorials and improving my skills in unity and using the code to develop a game of my own.

screenshot from my unity programme - Tutorial 02