This quarter’s workload is definitely getting to me; every week I feel like I could do much more in my games, and this week I wanted to do a lot more but time definitely got to me this week. I was hesitant about this project because when I think of procedurally generated I think recursion, and though it may seem like it would be easier just randomly generating objects/code (more broadly not having to place everything), recursion definitely was the death of me in my computer science classes. The code got to me more in this project as well (which delayed my progress in completing my game) because I couldn’t see what was happening at all times. I had many, many ideas for this game, but many of them were, again, the easy go-to’s. But this time, instead of creating my idea then shaping how it looked, I decided on my aesthetics that finalized my idea for my game.
Since we needed an icon and banner for this weeks game, I decided the prettiest idea was to make my game a 2D game like last game, since it would be easier 2D designing rather stress over a 3D design where this would be my first time creating these aesthetics. I always like this part of creating my game anyway; this and the title/controls/transition screens. Originally, I came up with the idea of a player (a diamond/pentagon/something other than a square) tackling an obstacle course where two obstacles the player would jump over (logs and spikes; the floor was safe to run around though) and two obstacles you had to jump on (stepping stones and targets; the floor was dangerous). Each level would infinitely get harder (Level 1: one obstacles, Level 2: two obstacles, etc.), each obstacle was randomized, and the time would be saved. Great.
One thing noticeably different from my icon and banner and my game is that it’s missing one main obstacle: spikes. The only reason is because I could not for the life of me figure out how to get a triangle in Unity, since there isn’t a pyramid as a 3D object and I couldn’t find a model to download 🙁 . This ultimately skewed my game; once people got down the idea to jump on the targets and the stepping stones, they would fail when they touched the logs. I made my controls a bit more precise, but I think my colliders were too precise and added the higher level of skill than I anticipated. Woops. I also couldn’t figure out how to generate the infinite levels without making infinite scenes, which made me panic make the three “levels” I have.
Though it wasn’t as finished as I hoped, I got great feedback from Professor LeMieux and Professor Boluk about making it a polished, complete game not too far from what I already have since some suggestions were what I wanted to do anyway. I didn’t even think of it being a mobile game either, but it’s definitely something to think about and this game I think that I can do really well as a final, polished game.