Working With Others.

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Game Details

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Game Submission: https://unleashedraptor.itch.io/raid-for-the-crystal

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Reflection:

This new project gave me a chance to make something more complex design wise. We came up with multiple different variations of a space marine protecting a pylon-like structure with different weapons. After some more input and ideas thrown around by the team, we tweaked the design to a 2D shooter where the large-clothed wizard would defend the pylon from the horde.

I took the lead and split up the work for what became 2 artists, 1 of our programmers wanted to make the art for the project, the other the environment. I would design most of the systems such as AI, UI. Leaving our programmer to make the player controls. I focused on the design first to set our theme and tone for the Artists. I started with the UI and came up with this.

For the background image, I came up with this shrouded design that gave off the effect of being an ancient place, fitting for the pylon and the wizard. This also gave me more freedom for a design of the level since I could experiment with different level platforms and have it still make sense.

With these things approved by the team. I went and implemented them into Unity. The image itself will work, just need to improve the drawing. The issue is the UI, it cuts off a lot of the screen and leaves the top really exposed. I decided then that it should ideally all be on top.

With this known I tinkered with the design. I felt that the top right and the middle would be best suited for ideas that I already had and clear intentions to display certain information up there. I then did a mockup of where I wanted what information on the screen. This helped teach me how important UI placement and information accessibility is within a game, I will need to focus more on this in the future. 

I then focused on our gameplay loop and specifically how the enemies incorporate into this system. This gave me a chance to learn what it takes to design AI for a game. To help understand this I split up what they needed to do into separate tasks or ‘states’.

I was able to then define what each state does that I could then make within the code itself. I learned how useful splitting up more complex topics into something like the above is since it can help with defining what each task is and help synergise other areas such as animation.

That’s all for now. Bye!