Week 1
Concept Discussion
From the start, we decided that it would be best making a 3D game, as we have been learning how to use Unity for the past 6 weeks and know how to dot things like setting up environments and importing scripts.
Audience Defining
First, we discussed what demographic the game will cater to.
- 14-16-year-olds - New Students
These will be secondary school students who will possibly be thinking about college and which one they'll go to. Not only will this game give more publicity to Stanmore, but also show off the work that the media courses bring.
- 17-18-year-olds - Current Students
This will before students who may be part of the college but do another course. Similar to the latter, this game will market the media courses.
- 19+-year-olds- Post Students/Parents
Content Restrictions
Using Minesh, we defined the things the game should have, but also things to avoid due to the fact it's marketing the college so it's preferable to keep the best impression.
The game should have an element of exploration, as we decided the location will be set in the media base, and alongside this, an element of learning, main things about the college itself. However, the things we labelled it should not contain are;
- Strong Language
- Racism
- Gore/Extream Violence
- Nudity
- Extremism/Radicalisation
- Potential Bias
- Plagiarism
Quite a few ideas were pitched, such as a Find The ID game was, a student has to fid their ID before they get caught without it. However, not much of us were too keen on it.
Another idea pitched is a game where the player plays as a protagonist that gets media teaches to fight, taken inspiration from Pokemon. However, we decided not to use this as it could be interpreted in a negative way, such as endorsing slavery.
Then the idea of a Stanmore-Street Fighter Game pitched where you play as the individual teachers of the media department and have them battle it out. This appeared to be one of the ideas the class were most interested in as we mostly like fighting games. However, from our discussion with Minesh, we already discussed that the game mustn't contain large violence. So this probably wouldn't be appropriate.
Eventually, one of my classmates pitched an idea based on the rule the media base has on eating, which is that you can't do it on the premises. So this idea plays on that with having a protagonist attempt to eat his food in an environment that will greatly resemble the media base. Once we all agreed to this idea. This idea not only fit the restrictions but also would cater to all the demographics we talked about. Making this the best concept we have currently.
We went into detail on this concept, making a quick sketch of how the layout my be like along with most of the assets we would have to include. So in the end, this was our chosen idea.
We ended up choosing to make the Game be in First Person. To aid my thinking if this would be a good idea, I did some secondary research on it. Upon a look at the most popular games today, I found that a lot of them like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Seige, Overwatch and Call of Duty: WWII all where a part of the list and each is first-person games. So from this secondary research, I can tell that First Person games do attract many people so I do believe it would be a good idea to have the game this way.
Refrence
Wealthy Gorilla (2019). The 20 Most Popular Video Games Right Now (2019). [online] Wealthy Gorilla. Available at: https://wealthygorilla.com/most-popular-video-games-now/ [Accessed 3 Feb. 2020].
Week 2
Another idea pitched is a game where the player plays as a protagonist that gets media teaches to fight, taken inspiration from Pokemon. However, we decided not to use this as it could be interpreted in a negative way, such as endorsing slavery.
Then the idea of a Stanmore-Street Fighter Game pitched where you play as the individual teachers of the media department and have them battle it out. This appeared to be one of the ideas the class were most interested in as we mostly like fighting games. However, from our discussion with Minesh, we already discussed that the game mustn't contain large violence. So this probably wouldn't be appropriate.
Eventually, one of my classmates pitched an idea based on the rule the media base has on eating, which is that you can't do it on the premises. So this idea plays on that with having a protagonist attempt to eat his food in an environment that will greatly resemble the media base. Once we all agreed to this idea. This idea not only fit the restrictions but also would cater to all the demographics we talked about. Making this the best concept we have currently.
We went into detail on this concept, making a quick sketch of how the layout my be like along with most of the assets we would have to include. So in the end, this was our chosen idea.
We ended up choosing to make the Game be in First Person. To aid my thinking if this would be a good idea, I did some secondary research on it. Upon a look at the most popular games today, I found that a lot of them like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Seige, Overwatch and Call of Duty: WWII all where a part of the list and each is first-person games. So from this secondary research, I can tell that First Person games do attract many people so I do believe it would be a good idea to have the game this way.
Refrence
Wealthy Gorilla (2019). The 20 Most Popular Video Games Right Now (2019). [online] Wealthy Gorilla. Available at: https://wealthygorilla.com/most-popular-video-games-now/ [Accessed 3 Feb. 2020].
Week 2
Pre Production
Now that we have chosen what the game will be about, we all set ourselves different tasks to assist with the pre-production. I decided to work on the GDD, as its one of the most important assets needed and we already labelled most of the things that will be present in the game so I thought I would transfer them to the GDD.
I made the format of it much different than how I've done any previous GDD, organising the tables to be more clear and making tables where assets can be marked based on its completion to avoid any confusion between the team when assets are worked on.
When I felt like there wasn't much more to add, I went to making the Game Flow Diagram, using draw.io, basing off the story concept. This was a little more difficult to do then it was in the past as this one was more mechanic specific rather than it incorporating a linear path. But I managed to complete it. I wanted to complete it early so that when the game is being created on unity, it will be very clear on what needs to be done and when. Thus also giving a clear view on when cerin assets will be needed so we can make sure the game gets more polished and continues to cater to our audience.
Lastly, I observed the research some of my teammates did which was them going around asking our potential audiences different questions so we can cater our game to those demographics. I took the tall for all of the results and transferred it to a spreadsheet to provide much clearer analysis of it for future reference. Using different information, such as people's favourite food and game types will be used to improve our game for the sake of our audience.
Week 3
Production
With most of the ideas and concepts complete, we now have gone straight in the production stage. We started off by having a discussion in what roles each person will be in by splitting into 4 teams; one for Coding. one for Art, one for Modelling and Animation and last for Audio.
We also discussed who will be the lead role for each team. They will manage everyone in the specific team and will have the last say on most of the things related to it. I pitched to be the lead of Audio, as I enjoyed it in the past very much when I made my foley for my animations and I wanted to ensure the game had mostly original audio as I believe that makes a game more commendable and raw.
I also pitched to be the lead on the coding as none of us has really dabbled with C#, the coding language Unity uses, although I have slightly practised with it when I was attempting to make a 3rd person character control so I thought I would be up for it.
Being the lead of 2 teams is a big responsibility but I believe I can succeed at this task.
I decided that I will work with the audio team this week as I believe its best if we finished the audio as soon as we can from the start as it helps to get the little things out the way so that we can eventually just focus on the key assets without any burden. I began with gathering the team and we made an audio sheet that labels how each will be made and when they should be made by.
I decided that I will work with the audio team this week as I believe its best if we finished the audio as soon as we can from the start as it helps to get the little things out the way so that we can eventually just focus on the key assets without any burden. I began with gathering the team and we made an audio sheet that labels how each will be made and when they should be made by.
Eventually, we started our first recording session, starting with the Foley. Just like I've always done in the past, we used a Shotgun Microphone as its 270° allows it to focus on the area it's pointed at and help avoid unwanted noise.
First, we did different takes to create the crunch sound which will be apart of the eating of the food in the game. We used 2 different items and used each in different ways, not only to ensure we get the latest one appropriate outcome but also to possibly make different types of crunches that can represent different foods.
Using a Crisp packet that I bought from the canteen, we took advantage with the Crisp inside by slightly crushing them in the packet to simulate the sound it would make if you were eating them. Then I tried using the packet itself as the plastic material of it creates a lot of noise when handled that could be edited to fit this sound. After recording this, my teammate started eating the crisp due to his hunger, but since he was, we thought we may as well record it as it would properly be the most accurate.
Next, we used the sandpaper that I got from the art department. Its scratchy and rough texture can create a sound that resembles the crunch of crisp when friction is applied. So I tried just scratching and it at first to apply that friction. After, my teammate gave me the idea to crumple the paper up. Because not only does the crumpling of paper creates a sound that can be edited to sound like a crunch, but also doing this with sandpaper will cause it to rub against itself and thus increasing its effectiveness.
The rest of the sounds were more simple. With that being the chewing sound that would be a part of the eating which was done with the mouth, footsteps, wall collision and a heartbeat.
I then when through all of them, chose which ones were the best, with the opinions of others, and uploaded them on google drive so that I and the rest of the audio team could edit the sound. Using different parts of chosen crunch and chewing sound, I made 3 different Foley for the eating. This will be used in a cycle of sounds for eating instead of just using the same one sound that may get boring for the player to listen to. Also, with the audience research, we did, we found out the top 3 most liked foods are chips, sandwiches and pasta. Each of which has different sounds when chewed so having different chewing sounds will allow more foods to fit in the game.
After that, I decided to divert more of my attention to the coding team to see how they were doing, start my part of the code and because the audio team knew what they were doing.
I chose to code the timer for the game that will represent the time until the food gets cold. I used a tutorial for this and managed to make a timer. However, at the time, the only one I could understand was a tutorial that made a timer that counts up continuously. But to not waste time, so I could complete the rest of it, I decided to come back to it later.
Refrence
YouTube (2015). How to create a Timer [Tutorial][C#] - Unity 3d. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-C95TuQtf0 [Accessed 30 Jan. 2020].
Next, I wanted to make it that a message would pop up after it reaches a cretin amount that will state how the food is cold. However, I couldn't find a tutorial that I could embed in the code and I had no idea how I would apply it myself, even when looking at previous scripts I've used.
Eventually, I had to get the teacher that taught us Unity to help me in which the method of it was actually quite quick and simple and now I have a timer that counts up and eventfully a message pops up after a cretin amount of time.
The last thing I wanted to do was to make the timer either stop or discoverer after the message pops up as it doesn't need to count anymore after that. With a slightly more understanding of how it works, I managed to make the timer disappear by setting it to be inactive when the message appears. However, this seems to prevent the message appearing, possibly due to the fact that if the timer is inactive, then the code that was keeping the message visible is disabled. But I decided to come back to this later.
After this day, I was quite disappointed. While I managed to do a good amount of the timer script with an appropriate outcome, it was clear to me that I had a severe lack of understanding of how C# works due to the fact I want able to add anything to it that I got from the tutorial and when my teammates were talking about their code, I almost had no idea what they were talking about, which can affect collaboration and make the work I do more difficult, longer to complete and with less confidence.
So I decided what I needed to do was use the rest of the week with working on teaching myself more about C#, that way my role as being one of the coders much easier. I was recommended by my teammate to a Youtube series teaching C# on Unity for beginners and I watched and practised it throughout the weekend. It was very useful and I managed to pick up on quite a lot.
First, I learned how you make variables, such as the ones that you see on the Inspector tab for when you want to change the value of an aspect of the script.
Terms like "public; float, int" and "bool" are variables that can be named and then referred to later on the script to use their values for various purposes. Such as if you were making a game with a character having a certain amount of health. In our game, we will have scripts such as one controlling the field of vision the N.P.Cs will have, which will need values set.
If you replace the "public" with "private" the values won't show up on the Inspector tab and instead will be hidden within the code itself. This can be if we ever make any scripts with values that need to be protected and hiding then in the code helps prevent accidental temperament and just allow them to work in the background.
Next, I learned about different ways to set conditions for events to happen. Both require "if statements" which is how you begin to tell the code if a particular condition is met, then something should happen. Very similar to the Event/Action system in Construct 2. You can set the condition to be when the variable you set is at a specific value.
This can be used for many different things, such as creating a scoring system in a game. This could possibly be used in our game for when we are deciding how the character wins by eating.
Then I learned a very useful feature. There is a term that can allow you to turn off components of objects and trigger it to happen whenever.
This can be used to turn off other scripts that you may not want to run at certain times or just to toggle features and properties of objects. After learning this, I had a good idea to solve the issue I had with the timer script. Instead of setting it to inactive, I can turn off it's rendering. Thus making it invisible instead of removed from the game.
I tested this out and it in fact worked. The message pops up and the timer disappears.
Week Evaluation
This week has been quite successful in different ways. Majority of the audion has already been done due to the small amount that is needed and I edited my part. When moving on to coding, I was extremely unconfident, realising I don't have any understanding of how the language works and even when I watch tutorials on how to make scripts cretin things it was still difficult to keep up with the information and still didn't understand it after.
But after watching most of a C# Beginners series, I managed to learn quite a bit of it and I now know most of the basics of scripting in it and its helped to the point where I was able to solve the last issue I had with the timer script with grate ease. I am now a lot more confident to continue in the scripting role from now.
Reference
SpeedTutor (2012). Channel. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/user/SpeedTutor/featured [Accessed 30 Jan. 2020].
Week 4
I got the audio team to do one more session, perfecting some of the sounds that had too much background noise and making new ones like the character mumbles and the background noise. On top of that, we managed to find music tracks that can be used in the game, such as for the title screen. The whole class agreed upon which ones.
I edited one of the sounds, mainly the background noise which was simply silence that allowed the recorder to pick up room ambience. This will be the background sound as it helps create an atmosphere. After listening to the music tracks, one of them sounded like I would be suitable if it played when the timer is reaching to 0 and the rest of the class agreed.
So I did the last bit of perfecting with the timer script. First I changed the timer so I count down instead of up as this will make it more clear for players in the amount of time they have left. Then I made a test script to test playing audio in Unity. Doing so appears to be a simple task. Once I saw that the audio plays just fine, I embedded it within the timer code, give it options to put audio into it that will play the selected music when it reaches a certain time.
Reference
Single Sapling Games (2018). Countdown Timer In Unity - Easy Beginners Tutorial/ Guide. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0j7PdU88a4 [Accessed 30 Jan. 2020].
When that was done, I aimed to complete the rest of the scripts for the audio that will be in the game. I used the 3rd person character that I made a while ago to help with the testing of this.
I began with the background audio, which was very simple as it didn't require any scripting and I simply just needed to be imported in. After fiddling with the volume for it I felt like I was effective in creating an atmosphere and I believe it would be a feature that draws our audience in more as the majority of them are 16-18 who would most likely play games with a lot of focus on music so just having room abience could be a surprise.
Previously, we were going to have mumbles in the background of the background noise to make the environment feel more alive and give the illusion that people are talking and thus is populated. But it felt like it was too prominent and since we will loop the audio, consistent mumbles would be tedious.
So I got the idea to make the background noise and mumbles separate by making a script to use objects to trigger the sound. This was simple to do as I've already had experience with collisions with objects in Unity through my practice and integrating audio from making the timer script. With a bit of trial and error with different methods for particular factors with how it worked, I managed to make a script where whatever object you attach it to will become a trigger for the mumble.
I believe the progression project is going somewhat alright at the moment. I have made decisions that I believe will help the product cater to our audience more.
1) Making the background noise, as it creates an atmosphere for the player and help the world of the game feel more natural and thus increase the success of its play.
2) I made the design decision to change the timer going up to counting down as I believe this will be better for our players as it will give a clearer indication of when there about of run out of time and thus help build suspense. I added thrilling music to the timer script to play when the time is coming to an end. This adds to the initial toe we were going for which is a thriller. And, as shown in the tall graph I made, Thriller was the second most liked out of all the 10 game genres, meaning that features like this that adds to the thrilling theme will be a very attractive trait to our audience.
Things like my timer script were working just fine so that's a good indication that all the ones I did will work. Even so, I started off trying to add the footsteps sounds that we made in the audio team to the controls of the player. At first, I was trying to add it directly to the script that was controlling the First Person Character's movements. But I couldn't fully understand the script in terms of what part was telling what button makes the player move. Even after asking for my teammate's help, we couldn't figure out a clear way to add the audio in the script.
So I decided to try and do it on a separate script so that I would know exactly where to integrate the audio. I managed to make the base of the script and it played the audio, but the issue was that the way I have written it would make Unity try to play the audio each frame, causing multiple to overlap. I tried researching if they were terms in C# that you can use to make things only play once but I came to no clear arrival.
I came up with the idea of using the method of disabling components that I have done a lot up to this point. As I noticed when you pout audio in the Audio Source component, I automatically play it from the start when it's active.
This means I could simply set it to active/inactive whether I want the footsteps to start or stop and this will just automatically play it. This method proved successful and now when the player walks, you can hear a seamless footstep clip.
Between the weeks, we were afraid of the project would be done in time as a lot of things weren't done and we didn't feel like the project in its current state has fully come together. So we all discussed and agreed on a countermeasure for this possible circumstance. If we arrive at the position where the game won't be fully complete, we can make it a simple visual tour of the media department. Something like this can promote the college and show off the work the media students can produce at the same time and could make a good place on the Stanmore website for people who want a look at the media base. This also matches with our research on our audience in terms with the player types as the most tallied on was the Exploration one. And a visual tour is exactly that, so the possibility of its success would still be fairly high. We will still aim to finished but use this for the worst-case scenario.
With the rest of map being worked on by the rest of the engine team and with most of the scripts done, It was time for me to work on one of the most important scripts, the eating script. Me other teammate worked on it but got caught up with it so I had to complete it.
My plan for this script was to make 2 to control the eating. One that will make the value go down every second, similar to the timer script, and then link that to another script that will make the food bar made by the art department go down. We decided to use a bar to determine how much more the player has to eat rather than using simple digits because we believe it looks more visually appealing. So combining my knowledge of asking the timer script and others, I managed to make one where when you hold a button, the value set will start to go down.
Next was the bar script. Using 2 tutorials, I made a script that when you press the same button for the one that starts making the value go down, the width of the bar would also.
Reference
Charger Games (2015). 19. Unity Scaling GameObjects and Changing Size - Unity C# Scripting Tutorial. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7I315b74HY [Accessed 31 Jan. 2020].
But I thought to myself that we didn't really need the value script as I can simply set what I want to happen after the bar gets to a certain width so I tried using that method instead so that would limit the number of scripts in the game and decrease the chances of bugs. It was harder then I thought it would be as I had issues with the width size not registering at the stat of the game ext, but eventually I managed to get the bar to go down when holding a button-down and when it reaches the end, it stops.
Now all that's left is to implement the food in the game in juxtaposition with the eating script. One of my teammates in the modelling team modelled the food. We only have time to have one type of food implemented within the game at the moment and the one we decided to used were Chips due to the fact, as previously stated, the most votes on the best canteen food were chips.
When I put the Chips in, I gave it a simple animation with it slightly jolting up and down to help aid the indication of the player eating. Then I made a quick script that plays the animation when the player starts eating, but I also gave them the ability to toggle if they want the chips visible or not. This is for people who may want to use the game just for its visual tour purposes.
Next week I and the rest of the engine team will come together where I will give them all the scripts I've worked on and put them together to hopefully create a base level of the outcome we intended. So I do have some confidence.
So I did the last bit of perfecting with the timer script. First I changed the timer so I count down instead of up as this will make it more clear for players in the amount of time they have left. Then I made a test script to test playing audio in Unity. Doing so appears to be a simple task. Once I saw that the audio plays just fine, I embedded it within the timer code, give it options to put audio into it that will play the selected music when it reaches a certain time.
Reference
Single Sapling Games (2018). Countdown Timer In Unity - Easy Beginners Tutorial/ Guide. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0j7PdU88a4 [Accessed 30 Jan. 2020].
When that was done, I aimed to complete the rest of the scripts for the audio that will be in the game. I used the 3rd person character that I made a while ago to help with the testing of this.
I began with the background audio, which was very simple as it didn't require any scripting and I simply just needed to be imported in. After fiddling with the volume for it I felt like I was effective in creating an atmosphere and I believe it would be a feature that draws our audience in more as the majority of them are 16-18 who would most likely play games with a lot of focus on music so just having room abience could be a surprise.
Previously, we were going to have mumbles in the background of the background noise to make the environment feel more alive and give the illusion that people are talking and thus is populated. But it felt like it was too prominent and since we will loop the audio, consistent mumbles would be tedious.
So I got the idea to make the background noise and mumbles separate by making a script to use objects to trigger the sound. This was simple to do as I've already had experience with collisions with objects in Unity through my practice and integrating audio from making the timer script. With a bit of trial and error with different methods for particular factors with how it worked, I managed to make a script where whatever object you attach it to will become a trigger for the mumble.
Week Evaluation
1) Making the background noise, as it creates an atmosphere for the player and help the world of the game feel more natural and thus increase the success of its play.
2) I made the design decision to change the timer going up to counting down as I believe this will be better for our players as it will give a clearer indication of when there about of run out of time and thus help build suspense. I added thrilling music to the timer script to play when the time is coming to an end. This adds to the initial toe we were going for which is a thriller. And, as shown in the tall graph I made, Thriller was the second most liked out of all the 10 game genres, meaning that features like this that adds to the thrilling theme will be a very attractive trait to our audience.
Week 5-6
This week, I wanted to work on a copy of the prototype of the game that the rest of my team was working on so that my next scripting can be more accurate for the final project itself.
Things like my timer script were working just fine so that's a good indication that all the ones I did will work. Even so, I started off trying to add the footsteps sounds that we made in the audio team to the controls of the player. At first, I was trying to add it directly to the script that was controlling the First Person Character's movements. But I couldn't fully understand the script in terms of what part was telling what button makes the player move. Even after asking for my teammate's help, we couldn't figure out a clear way to add the audio in the script.
So I decided to try and do it on a separate script so that I would know exactly where to integrate the audio. I managed to make the base of the script and it played the audio, but the issue was that the way I have written it would make Unity try to play the audio each frame, causing multiple to overlap. I tried researching if they were terms in C# that you can use to make things only play once but I came to no clear arrival.
I came up with the idea of using the method of disabling components that I have done a lot up to this point. As I noticed when you pout audio in the Audio Source component, I automatically play it from the start when it's active.
This means I could simply set it to active/inactive whether I want the footsteps to start or stop and this will just automatically play it. This method proved successful and now when the player walks, you can hear a seamless footstep clip.
Between the weeks, we were afraid of the project would be done in time as a lot of things weren't done and we didn't feel like the project in its current state has fully come together. So we all discussed and agreed on a countermeasure for this possible circumstance. If we arrive at the position where the game won't be fully complete, we can make it a simple visual tour of the media department. Something like this can promote the college and show off the work the media students can produce at the same time and could make a good place on the Stanmore website for people who want a look at the media base. This also matches with our research on our audience in terms with the player types as the most tallied on was the Exploration one. And a visual tour is exactly that, so the possibility of its success would still be fairly high. We will still aim to finished but use this for the worst-case scenario.
With the rest of map being worked on by the rest of the engine team and with most of the scripts done, It was time for me to work on one of the most important scripts, the eating script. Me other teammate worked on it but got caught up with it so I had to complete it.
My plan for this script was to make 2 to control the eating. One that will make the value go down every second, similar to the timer script, and then link that to another script that will make the food bar made by the art department go down. We decided to use a bar to determine how much more the player has to eat rather than using simple digits because we believe it looks more visually appealing. So combining my knowledge of asking the timer script and others, I managed to make one where when you hold a button, the value set will start to go down.
Next was the bar script. Using 2 tutorials, I made a script that when you press the same button for the one that starts making the value go down, the width of the bar would also.
Reference
Charger Games (2015). 19. Unity Scaling GameObjects and Changing Size - Unity C# Scripting Tutorial. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7I315b74HY [Accessed 31 Jan. 2020].
But I thought to myself that we didn't really need the value script as I can simply set what I want to happen after the bar gets to a certain width so I tried using that method instead so that would limit the number of scripts in the game and decrease the chances of bugs. It was harder then I thought it would be as I had issues with the width size not registering at the stat of the game ext, but eventually I managed to get the bar to go down when holding a button-down and when it reaches the end, it stops.
Now all that's left is to implement the food in the game in juxtaposition with the eating script. One of my teammates in the modelling team modelled the food. We only have time to have one type of food implemented within the game at the moment and the one we decided to used were Chips due to the fact, as previously stated, the most votes on the best canteen food were chips.
When I put the Chips in, I gave it a simple animation with it slightly jolting up and down to help aid the indication of the player eating. Then I made a quick script that plays the animation when the player starts eating, but I also gave them the ability to toggle if they want the chips visible or not. This is for people who may want to use the game just for its visual tour purposes.
Next week I and the rest of the engine team will come together where I will give them all the scripts I've worked on and put them together to hopefully create a base level of the outcome we intended. So I do have some confidence.
Week Evaluation
This week has been a lot more useful, I managed to implement the sound clip for the footsteps for both the player walking and running. Although we have decided that the sprinting button may be removed from the game as the can is about not getting caught eating so in terms of the theme and the audience, It doesn't provide much.
Then finally, I managed to create the eating mechanic, using chips as the food as people prefer it over all other canteen food.
Along with that, our classroom, 112 is fully textured with all the assets and I and everyone else agree it looks very accrete to the real thing and the rest of the base has been mapped out. Next week I will be working with the rest of the engine team to implement all the scripts and mechanics I have made into the original project file. Even if we don't manage to complete the core mechanics that cater to the thrilling aspect such as the eating and having teachers, I do believe we can definitely create a very realistic depiction of the media base that can give possible future students an authentic experience of the media base. This would be an even better than how most Colleges and Universities do where they use 360 tours which only sows rooms in the 360 scale where our game can let people actually walking and get a feel for the environment for itself in a way that draws more of their attention. As I previously said, this would be great for our audience as our main audience is for possible student as the game is meant to promote the college so, at this point, I believe the game is on its way in being an outcome that caters to its audience greatly.
Then finally, I managed to create the eating mechanic, using chips as the food as people prefer it over all other canteen food.
Along with that, our classroom, 112 is fully textured with all the assets and I and everyone else agree it looks very accrete to the real thing and the rest of the base has been mapped out. Next week I will be working with the rest of the engine team to implement all the scripts and mechanics I have made into the original project file. Even if we don't manage to complete the core mechanics that cater to the thrilling aspect such as the eating and having teachers, I do believe we can definitely create a very realistic depiction of the media base that can give possible future students an authentic experience of the media base. This would be an even better than how most Colleges and Universities do where they use 360 tours which only sows rooms in the 360 scale where our game can let people actually walking and get a feel for the environment for itself in a way that draws more of their attention. As I previously said, this would be great for our audience as our main audience is for possible student as the game is meant to promote the college so, at this point, I believe the game is on its way in being an outcome that caters to its audience greatly.
Week 7
This week is the final week for the project as it will be displayed on the open day to fulfil its purpose of promoting the media base. It's also because the media base isn't a part of the tour guide for visitors so this would be a good way for them to get a feel for how it's like.
But before then, I worked with the rest of the engine team to put everything together. I imported all the scripts and assets I made into the original project file and once that was sorted, we worked on seamlessly implementing them within the code that was in, such as the scripts for the AI working in conjunction with my Eating script.
We continued this up to the day it was going to be showcased. On the start of Thursday, I and one other person in the engine team both worked on combining the AI script with the module made by the modelling team along with its animation. With it roaming around, it worked just fine. However, when testing it when it was trying to chase the player, it was all messed up. It kept changing its angle possible due to it clipping against something and it kept getting stuck in place.
We were trying to fix it for over an hour, but unfortunately, it was using up valuable time and we needed to ensure the rest of the map had all its textures and assets which were most important. We made sure all rooms had the objects that were made for them and that the appropriate textures were applied. It took a while but eventually, we managed to bring it to a good level as we were happy with the design of the map. After making sure all objects had their collisions, we exported the project to an exe file and thus it was ready for showcasing.
I assisted with the open evening, specifically presenting the game to however felt interested to play it by explaining to them what the game is and how we made it. I also asked each person questions in order to obtain valuable feedback and responses.
Evaluation
At the beginning of this project, we brainstormed a few different ideas in what the project should have been that would have catered to our audience, such as;
A Street Fighter style game where Stanmore teachers battle it out. However, this may have been too violent so we scrapped this idea.
And Collect-A-Thons such as a player trying to find an ID. But this may not necessarily say much about the college itself so this was also scrapped.
During Pre-Production, nothing much changed at all and were all on the same page with most things. However, quite a few things changed through the actual production stage. This mostly has to do with mechanics and assets we planned on implementing but either didn't have time to or because of technical issues. Such as how we did talk about beginning the game with an animation of the player walking onto campus to add more context to the game, but this faded away when we actually go into it and other jobs demanded more attention so this was never done. But the biggest change happens to be what causes us to have to revert the theme of the project. We ended up having to remove the eating and AI mechanics from the game completely and instead present it as a visual tour instead due to different issues.
I have had quite a few issues throughout the project. At the start, I pretty much knew nothing about C# and struggled with making scripts and combining different tutorials together to make very particular commands, if I even understood them at all. But after revising C# independently for a bit, I managed to gain a much larger understanding of it and it managed to be enough to where the scripts I struggled with like the timer script, I was able to complete with ease.
At certain points of the project, files wouldn't open on Unity properly and would remove important components it needed to run the game. But after updating Unity they managed to work fine and afterwards I became more aware of the risks with working on Unity in multiple places with different versions of it.
The issue that was the breaking point in what caused the project to change was that on the last day, the NPC we added to the game was not acting in the way we were expecting. With it changing its angle incorrectly, being stuck in one spot and sometimes going through objects. It was an issue that would have taken too much time to work on, so we reverted to our contingency plan where like I stated, made it be a visual tour instead.
When the game was done and ready to be resented on the open day, I managed to obtain feedback from almost all 3 of our target audiences which were as follows;
We continued this up to the day it was going to be showcased. On the start of Thursday, I and one other person in the engine team both worked on combining the AI script with the module made by the modelling team along with its animation. With it roaming around, it worked just fine. However, when testing it when it was trying to chase the player, it was all messed up. It kept changing its angle possible due to it clipping against something and it kept getting stuck in place.
We were trying to fix it for over an hour, but unfortunately, it was using up valuable time and we needed to ensure the rest of the map had all its textures and assets which were most important. We made sure all rooms had the objects that were made for them and that the appropriate textures were applied. It took a while but eventually, we managed to bring it to a good level as we were happy with the design of the map. After making sure all objects had their collisions, we exported the project to an exe file and thus it was ready for showcasing.
I assisted with the open evening, specifically presenting the game to however felt interested to play it by explaining to them what the game is and how we made it. I also asked each person questions in order to obtain valuable feedback and responses.
Evaluation
At the beginning of this project, we brainstormed a few different ideas in what the project should have been that would have catered to our audience, such as;
A Street Fighter style game where Stanmore teachers battle it out. However, this may have been too violent so we scrapped this idea.
And Collect-A-Thons such as a player trying to find an ID. But this may not necessarily say much about the college itself so this was also scrapped.
During Pre-Production, nothing much changed at all and were all on the same page with most things. However, quite a few things changed through the actual production stage. This mostly has to do with mechanics and assets we planned on implementing but either didn't have time to or because of technical issues. Such as how we did talk about beginning the game with an animation of the player walking onto campus to add more context to the game, but this faded away when we actually go into it and other jobs demanded more attention so this was never done. But the biggest change happens to be what causes us to have to revert the theme of the project. We ended up having to remove the eating and AI mechanics from the game completely and instead present it as a visual tour instead due to different issues.
I have had quite a few issues throughout the project. At the start, I pretty much knew nothing about C# and struggled with making scripts and combining different tutorials together to make very particular commands, if I even understood them at all. But after revising C# independently for a bit, I managed to gain a much larger understanding of it and it managed to be enough to where the scripts I struggled with like the timer script, I was able to complete with ease.
At certain points of the project, files wouldn't open on Unity properly and would remove important components it needed to run the game. But after updating Unity they managed to work fine and afterwards I became more aware of the risks with working on Unity in multiple places with different versions of it.
The issue that was the breaking point in what caused the project to change was that on the last day, the NPC we added to the game was not acting in the way we were expecting. With it changing its angle incorrectly, being stuck in one spot and sometimes going through objects. It was an issue that would have taken too much time to work on, so we reverted to our contingency plan where like I stated, made it be a visual tour instead.
When the game was done and ready to be resented on the open day, I managed to obtain feedback from almost all 3 of our target audiences which were as follows;
- 14-16-year-olds - Possible Students
This is one of our main Demographics and from the responses, I can tell we were successful with them. All of these particular people expressed their pleasure with it. Making comments like how it was "really cool" and how it felt like a well "equipped" and "relaxing environment". Most also believed it showed the base is well organised and one even admired the double monitor setup we have.
One of them, in particular, happened to have visited the media base before in a school visit. He managed to recognise the different rooms without me even telling him which was which and he rated the accuracy from what he saw a 9/10.
So overall, our main target audience of possible students showed a clear liking to the game. Admiring the visuals and atmosphere. All agreed that it was fun to walk around and that it gave them the impression that I would be a good place to study with the multiple rooms and equipment it showed.
I believe it was successful as it not only entertained this audience but also managed to show them the kind of facilities we have.
So overall, our main target audience of possible students showed a clear liking to the game. Admiring the visuals and atmosphere. All agreed that it was fun to walk around and that it gave them the impression that I would be a good place to study with the multiple rooms and equipment it showed.
I believe it was successful as it not only entertained this audience but also managed to show them the kind of facilities we have.
- 16+ year-olds - Current Students
Only one current student played the game. But this person expressed a lot of enthusiasm for the project. Stating how they saw it before and was instead enough to come up and tell me what they thought about what they saw. She said;
The accuracy is a 10/10, also being able to identify the rooms without me having to say
It was fun to walk around and the game is aesthetically pleasing.
And she agreed it gave the impression that It would be good to study there, even saying how it "makes the place look better than it actually is".
So despite the low number of current students playing, it appears the game would still be admired by them.
- 19+ year-olds - Teacher
Majority of the responses came from the staff and they gave a multitude of responses and they were more varied.
TJ said;
The Accuracy is 9/10. Only missing the one point because it was "too good ". He felt it gave off a cinema-like feel and would make him want to go there if he wasn't already working there.
His constructive feedback was that It needed more of the equipment, such as the different consoles we have. He also said that the game needed more interactivity, such as having computers being able to be turned on and have information.
Seema said;
The accuracy is a 10/10 with a nice environment. She found the game to have good and easy control and enjoyed it.
However, she also stated that the real-life department is still better than it is in the game as it doesn't give a 100% accrete feel of the atmosphere.
Martin said;
Accuracy is a 9/10 and admires the retro style filter that we used,
However, he felt that it doesn't make it look like a good place to learn due to the fact that the rooms seem small.
Chloe said;
The accuracy is an 8/10, with the environment being creative and derailed. She stated that the Graphics remind her of a game called "James Bond GoldenEye".
He constructive feedback was that the atmosphere feels quite "cold" and it's not as populated as it normally is. She also says that t would be better if there were more stuff to do as after 5min there was nothing g else to do.
Stephane;
For this, I got the most amount of feedback and this one, in particular, was very varied.
The positives were that the accuracy was 9/10, the layout was good and the models were made well.
The advice given was;
More needs to be done with the lighting, such as making the studio dark and make the only light source in it be the lamps to make it feels more atmospheric.
There should be things that help teach the player things about the college. Such as having teachers that you can talk to.
Populate the Enviourment more with people.
Give the player more stuff to do.
Feedback Overview
Overall, the game appeared to be a success. Everyone who played it seemed to have enjoyed their experience and verbally/visually showed pleasure and amazement when playing it. It also seems that the accuracy of the map is very high and out of the 10+ people I asked all rated it 8+ so we managed to accomplish on the visual tour aspect. I feel like it has given the possible students more clearance on what our media course entails and they now have a good idea of how the base looks as they weren't taken up there. And I believe it attracted the stuff a lot and showed them what the students of media can produce. While I was nervous at first of how it would be seen since we didn't manage to accomplish what we originally planned, we were still able to produce something that our audience liked so I'm happy with how things turned out. What I believe I could have done differently was teach myself more of the skills I needed from earlier on, mainly things like C#. This would have meant when we came back from half term, I would have known what I was doing from the start and be able to breeze through most of the work faster and this could have resulted in more things getting done more faster. In future, I'll make sure I'll be more prepared for big projects like this. I do aim to use this feedback to improve the game much more. Such as improving the lighting, fixing the placements of all objects, populating the areas with NPCs and giving the player multiple of things to interact with that will teach them more about the base, course and the college itself.
Project Overview
Being a part of this project, I believe I have improved upon and developed many different skills, especially compared to the beginning of the project. At the start, I knew almost nothing about C# and could barley make one script on my own, to the point I even felt self-conscious compared to the skills for the rest of the Unity team. But now I have an above basic knowledge of it and can make some scripts without even having to look for tutorials. This is most definitely pleasing, especially since this is one of the main things I noted on my skills audit that I did a few weeks ago, where I wrote that learning C# is the subject I want to learn and practice more.
In terms of my soft skills, my team working skills have developed even more. Mainly by me learning the importance of different aspects of it. One of these things is assessing the skills and knowledge everyone currently has at the beginning of a project. This could have been useful for people like me as it makes sure everyone is on the same page in what they need to do and what they need to be able to do. I also believe I've become better at decision making which is something I've always struggled with, since I've had to make many design decisions and helped managed both the audio and Unity team, along with discussing with the other teams.
In terms of the things I improved from my Skill Audit;
Working under pressure has gone up to be good, as I had to cope with death with things messing up in literal hours before it had to be executed and managed to prevail with something still successful.
Planning has also gone up to good as from learning C#, I had to plant and dissect how I would make cretin scripts and how they would integrate within Unity
So I'm glad that I was a part of this project, I have improved in different ways and I am now a lot more confident with Unity to the point where I believe I can use it for my FMP.
Freya said;
Accuracy is 8/10, only problem being is the texture of the floor which apparently was too "sparkly". She gave the game many compliments, saying it was "really cool", and admired the attention to detail it had, even saying that it made her wont to come to see the work we do more.
Her constructive feedback was just like the previous, that there need to be more things that you can interact with.
Accuracy is 8/10, only problem being is the texture of the floor which apparently was too "sparkly". She gave the game many compliments, saying it was "really cool", and admired the attention to detail it had, even saying that it made her wont to come to see the work we do more.
Her constructive feedback was just like the previous, that there need to be more things that you can interact with.
Seema said;
The accuracy is a 10/10 with a nice environment. She found the game to have good and easy control and enjoyed it.
However, she also stated that the real-life department is still better than it is in the game as it doesn't give a 100% accrete feel of the atmosphere.
Martin said;
Accuracy is a 9/10 and admires the retro style filter that we used,
However, he felt that it doesn't make it look like a good place to learn due to the fact that the rooms seem small.
Chloe said;
The accuracy is an 8/10, with the environment being creative and derailed. She stated that the Graphics remind her of a game called "James Bond GoldenEye".
He constructive feedback was that the atmosphere feels quite "cold" and it's not as populated as it normally is. She also says that t would be better if there were more stuff to do as after 5min there was nothing g else to do.
Stephane;
For this, I got the most amount of feedback and this one, in particular, was very varied.
The positives were that the accuracy was 9/10, the layout was good and the models were made well.
The advice given was;
More needs to be done with the lighting, such as making the studio dark and make the only light source in it be the lamps to make it feels more atmospheric.
There should be things that help teach the player things about the college. Such as having teachers that you can talk to.
Populate the Enviourment more with people.
Give the player more stuff to do.
Feedback Overview
Overall, the game appeared to be a success. Everyone who played it seemed to have enjoyed their experience and verbally/visually showed pleasure and amazement when playing it. It also seems that the accuracy of the map is very high and out of the 10+ people I asked all rated it 8+ so we managed to accomplish on the visual tour aspect. I feel like it has given the possible students more clearance on what our media course entails and they now have a good idea of how the base looks as they weren't taken up there. And I believe it attracted the stuff a lot and showed them what the students of media can produce. While I was nervous at first of how it would be seen since we didn't manage to accomplish what we originally planned, we were still able to produce something that our audience liked so I'm happy with how things turned out. What I believe I could have done differently was teach myself more of the skills I needed from earlier on, mainly things like C#. This would have meant when we came back from half term, I would have known what I was doing from the start and be able to breeze through most of the work faster and this could have resulted in more things getting done more faster. In future, I'll make sure I'll be more prepared for big projects like this. I do aim to use this feedback to improve the game much more. Such as improving the lighting, fixing the placements of all objects, populating the areas with NPCs and giving the player multiple of things to interact with that will teach them more about the base, course and the college itself.
Project Overview
Being a part of this project, I believe I have improved upon and developed many different skills, especially compared to the beginning of the project. At the start, I knew almost nothing about C# and could barley make one script on my own, to the point I even felt self-conscious compared to the skills for the rest of the Unity team. But now I have an above basic knowledge of it and can make some scripts without even having to look for tutorials. This is most definitely pleasing, especially since this is one of the main things I noted on my skills audit that I did a few weeks ago, where I wrote that learning C# is the subject I want to learn and practice more.
In terms of my soft skills, my team working skills have developed even more. Mainly by me learning the importance of different aspects of it. One of these things is assessing the skills and knowledge everyone currently has at the beginning of a project. This could have been useful for people like me as it makes sure everyone is on the same page in what they need to do and what they need to be able to do. I also believe I've become better at decision making which is something I've always struggled with, since I've had to make many design decisions and helped managed both the audio and Unity team, along with discussing with the other teams.
In terms of the things I improved from my Skill Audit;
Working under pressure has gone up to be good, as I had to cope with death with things messing up in literal hours before it had to be executed and managed to prevail with something still successful.
Planning has also gone up to good as from learning C#, I had to plant and dissect how I would make cretin scripts and how they would integrate within Unity
So I'm glad that I was a part of this project, I have improved in different ways and I am now a lot more confident with Unity to the point where I believe I can use it for my FMP.
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