Beta
Alright so, its that time again isn't it? That time of the week when some boy from CDM writes about his current activities in the production of his Unity game. Well I am glad to say that this game is more or less now complete. Hip hip hooray open the champagne. Anyhow let's begin.
So first off lets mention what new things have been added in. I already mentioned I have added in a main menu into my game as well as a level select screen, these were added in because without them, accessing the game levels would be impossible, plus it just keeps everything nice and organised. However what is definitely a new addition is the pause menu. I realized a pause menu was important to the game as due to the nature of the game, a player could possibly lose after a goal hasn't been completed in the allocated time, as you might have guessed sometimes our lives do indeed become too busy occasionally and we may need to step away from the gaming to attend to it. With the pause menu, they can run the errand and come back all without worry of losing unfairly due to inactivity.
Adding in the pause menu wasn't terribly tricky to be honest, aside from my occasionally dimness in forgetting to add in the occasional semicolon to close the commands in the script or misspellings or something crazy like that (believe me, scripts are merciless over even the tiniest of errors.) Once it was implemented the pause menu worked a charm and the buttons loaded back to where I wanted them to go to.
That being said, the pause menu opened up (ha ha opened) a problem in the game in the most weirdly specific way possible. Okay, so bear with me on this: Say you pick a level of the game and then you decide to head back to the menu (for whatever reason). Well, what's say you want to go back and pick another level? Well it will work but the game pauses on load. At first I simply thought the game froze, turns out its cause it pauses on awake (its really difficult to detect since the pause menu doesn't technically pop up due to the way I scripted to stop it doing so.) Online wasn't much helpful either, however by pure dumb luck or absolute godlike detective skills I realized that on the void start of the pause menu, even though the default Pause Menu option is set to false upon awake, in the event of a reload it pauses itself but won't display the menu. The idea of pausing in Unity works using Time.timescale. In the event you wish the game to pause, that would equal to 0, but if movement is something you want it needs to be set to 1 say. I guess the script by default thought to set the timescale to 0 in the event of awake after reloading another game scene so the script needed a setting to say it should be awake on 1 by default. Okay that was painful to explain and I imagine most have dropped off at this point.
I finally added a back button to both the Game Over and You Win. This was added to give the player less hassle and so they could simply head back to the menu and select a new level for themselves.
I am happy with how the Unity game is now turning out and I am pleased to more or less have the game complete to my intentions. While some ideas were altered bit by bit over the weeks I can safely say this game is ready to play, just gotta export it.
Roll on.
An improved win screen from before. The back button has been added to allow players access back to the main menu
Likewise, Game Over has the same additions.
Choose your level, let's see what takes your fancy
Wowzers, this is what players will be greeted with upon first opening the game.
So first off lets mention what new things have been added in. I already mentioned I have added in a main menu into my game as well as a level select screen, these were added in because without them, accessing the game levels would be impossible, plus it just keeps everything nice and organised. However what is definitely a new addition is the pause menu. I realized a pause menu was important to the game as due to the nature of the game, a player could possibly lose after a goal hasn't been completed in the allocated time, as you might have guessed sometimes our lives do indeed become too busy occasionally and we may need to step away from the gaming to attend to it. With the pause menu, they can run the errand and come back all without worry of losing unfairly due to inactivity.
Adding in the pause menu wasn't terribly tricky to be honest, aside from my occasionally dimness in forgetting to add in the occasional semicolon to close the commands in the script or misspellings or something crazy like that (believe me, scripts are merciless over even the tiniest of errors.) Once it was implemented the pause menu worked a charm and the buttons loaded back to where I wanted them to go to.
That being said, the pause menu opened up (ha ha opened) a problem in the game in the most weirdly specific way possible. Okay, so bear with me on this: Say you pick a level of the game and then you decide to head back to the menu (for whatever reason). Well, what's say you want to go back and pick another level? Well it will work but the game pauses on load. At first I simply thought the game froze, turns out its cause it pauses on awake (its really difficult to detect since the pause menu doesn't technically pop up due to the way I scripted to stop it doing so.) Online wasn't much helpful either, however by pure dumb luck or absolute godlike detective skills I realized that on the void start of the pause menu, even though the default Pause Menu option is set to false upon awake, in the event of a reload it pauses itself but won't display the menu. The idea of pausing in Unity works using Time.timescale. In the event you wish the game to pause, that would equal to 0, but if movement is something you want it needs to be set to 1 say. I guess the script by default thought to set the timescale to 0 in the event of awake after reloading another game scene so the script needed a setting to say it should be awake on 1 by default. Okay that was painful to explain and I imagine most have dropped off at this point.
I finally added a back button to both the Game Over and You Win. This was added to give the player less hassle and so they could simply head back to the menu and select a new level for themselves.
I am happy with how the Unity game is now turning out and I am pleased to more or less have the game complete to my intentions. While some ideas were altered bit by bit over the weeks I can safely say this game is ready to play, just gotta export it.
Roll on.
An improved win screen from before. The back button has been added to allow players access back to the main menu
Likewise, Game Over has the same additions.
Choose your level, let's see what takes your fancy
Wowzers, this is what players will be greeted with upon first opening the game.
Hey Fionn,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog your game so far looks amazing and it looks like you are speeding a long with your game well you are ahead of me anyway you obviously put a lot of time and effort into your game and it shows i really like your main menu it matches the theme of your game really well and it is obviously working fine I have had some trouble creating a main menu so seeing one that works amazes me I also like that you have a you win and you lose aspect to your game which is really good I also like that the player can select a level which is really advanced you obviously know what you are doing anyway i will leave it there hope to read more from you soon.
-Jennifer
Hi Fionn
ReplyDeleteI really have enjoyed reading your blogs these last few weeks and i can honestly say that the art style you chose for this game really stands out especially from the warm color scheme you chose to go with as it gives a real friendly/ inviting style to the game similar to what you would see in Mario games. I like that you made it possible for the player to choose the level , as it gives the person playing more variety on choice which is always appealing to players from what I have seen. I was curious did you also consider adding the aspect of the player choosing between difficulties on each level possibly adding a timer for more suspense or more obstacles for more challenge. Either way I love how your game is coming along and cannot wait to get to try it for myself !
Best of luck in the coming week and kind regards.
-Dillon
Hey Fionn,
ReplyDeleteI'm really impressed with your game development and progression, great work!
You seemed to have a fully fledged and mostly functional game with separate levels. I'm really interested ion giving it a go on Wednesday and am excited to see how your hard work has paid off.
all the best,
James
Hi Fionn,
ReplyDeleteWow, your game looks really impressive so far! I like how you thought of quality of life features to add to the game; as you said, life can be very busy and implementing a pause feature is a great idea and quality of life feature. I also like how you added a menu where the player can pick their desired levels to play- so if a player likes a certain level in particular they can replay it as much as they want without having to play through every single level.
Have you considered adding different modes to your game to increase difficulty? This could simply be adding/reducing time for the player to collect all the objects on the map. I think that with your progress and skill in creating your game that this could be a realistic task for you that would add even more replayability to your game.
Can't wait to try out your game, it looks really fun!
All the best,
Kay
Hi Fionn,
ReplyDeleteI really like your blog, it's 666 (I couldn't think of any other way of referencing SlipKnot, sorry). I remember playing it and I think it's really good so fair play to you for creating a fully working game, even if it has a few bugs.
Speaking of bugs, I think everyone has been struggling with bugs and glitch, so don't feel bad if you can't get your game perfect ! After all, I can't get a working main menu but you were able to (totally not jealous at all, nope, no way, just won't be speaking to you in the next week at all, ps I'm joking hahaha).
Now that you game is complete, will you add more to it or just leave as it is ?
Anyway, this will be the last time I comment on your blog, so Happy holidays and I hope to see you next semester !
Y.I.S
Sarah H.