Author: Giana Oliver

I didn’t know what this event would be like or how it would go, but I’m really glad I went. The room was kinda small, yet so many people showed up! Unfortunately I had to leave before the discussion started, but I did get to stick around for about an hour or so. It was a lot of fun checking out everyone’s games and talking to people and fellow classmates at the event. I even saw my radio professor Jesse Drew at the exhibit and we talked a bit about the games there. I loved watching people attempt to play my game. However, something happened with my game where the mouse wouldn’t show up on the start screen whenever someone restarted the game, so that was a little annoying. However, that didn’t stop people from playing. It was interesting to see that nobody was able to get past level 2! Even though the players found it challenging, I saw them keep going at it to try and try again, and it made me feel proud that I made a game that people enjoyed playing, even if they lose at it. This whole event and class was a great experience for me and I’m really glad I took it this quarter. It was really fun to see everyone’s skill level grow since week 1 and see what games everyone produced in the end. What I thought was very interesting was that everyone had their own unique game. No game was alike and I love that. It showed everyone’s creativity and just what they’re capable of creating.
I didn’t get a chance to play everyone’s game at the exhibit but the ones I did play I had so much fun playing! I’ll definitely be trying out everyone’s game when I get the chance.

Man I can’t believe this game and class is done! This whole quarter was definitely an experience for me and definitely a challenging one. There were times where I just felt completely overwhelmed with the workload plus with all my other classes, I questioned whether or not I would be able to handle everything this quarter. There were times when I felt like dropping the class, but I’m really glad I didn’t. After finishing this game and getting through this class, I feel really proud of myself for sticking through it all. The fact that I finished this game along with my other class projects makes me feel super accomplished. Even if I feel extremely exhausted lol.
Now about the finished product of my game, I didn’t get to put in everything I wanted, but for what it is, I can say I’m proud of it. There is still a little issue with the scoreboard but it’s very minor and it shouldn’t be too distracting to the player since it doesn’t affect the overall gameplay that much. I also wish I put in music and sound effects, but due to time constraints it wasn’t possible. Maybe if I plan to update it in the future, that’ll be the first thing I do. However, I’m not too eager to get back to coding on this game right away. I’m really glad people seemed to like this game, and that they enjoyed the new additions to it. I knew I wanted to make a simple yet challenging game and I can happily say that I accomplished that. It’s even hard for me to play this game sometimes. When I was testing out the coding I had to cut down on the times just so I can test out the levels. I was honestly surprised I got through 7 of the 8 levels when I demonstrated the game to the class. Speaking of the 8th level, I wish people got a chance to see it but basically it’s a level where there is no time limit and the player must survive through all of the challenges they faced prior, while trying to collect coins to score points. It’s honestly a mess of a level but I kind of like the chaos of it all. Here is a preview gif of what the level looks like (as you can see even I have trouble with this level haha):

Also, it was really fun seeing everyone’s games! Everybody did a fantastic job and I was impressed with all of them. I can’t wait to try them out for myself. I hope you all enjoy playing this game, if you ever feel up to the challenge. 😉

I actually ran into an issue when trying to continue working on my game. When Patrick was showing me a tip on how to slow down the time on my game, I accidentally saved it and left the class not knowing how to change it back. So I was stuck with an incredibly slow moving player and objects. I ended up re-creating the entire game from scratch because I could not for the life of me figure out how to fix the speed on my game. Luckily I was able to re-create some of it but I wasted a lot of time remaking the game instead of adding to it. I ended up emailing Patrick about my problem and he did email me back telling me how to fix it. (Thanks Patrick!) I should’ve done that sooner but I was being stupid and thought it would be best to just make it over again. (NOPE. ASK FOR HELP KIDS!) Now I can continue working on my old project, where there’s more content, and continue to add to it. I’ve actually had some trouble trying to differentiate the levels and trying to think of challenges for the player, but I think I have a lot of ideas planned out now. I’ve narrowed down to about 7 or 8 different levels, each with a different obstacle the player has to face. I was also thinking of giving each level a title in between each other so the player has a sort of breather, plus maybe a hint at what challenge they’ll face. For example, in one level some dodgeballs don’t hurt you, they just bounce off the player. But the player doesn’t know that when they play. The dodgeball would be a different color and be mixed in with the regular dodgeballs, and I may give a subtle hint about it in the title of the level. For example I’d probably name that level “Friend or Foe.”
I’ve also been watching a bunch of Unity tutorial videos on how to implement different techniques. Since I lost a lot of time, I’m questioning on whether or not to add the powerups idea, but I’m going to try to fit that in. I actually found a really helpful video on how to spawn objects randomly, which is what I would like to use for my powerup idea. Or perhaps use it to create obstacles. For anyone wanting to use this technique for their game, I recommend you check out this tutorial! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLTP4EbM1N4

This week I focused on just trying to get the basics of the game working. I wanted to get the core features and codes done before I started differentiating the rest of the levels. I finally added a timer to the game which I’m so relieved about. At first I was having a lot of trouble just trying to recreate my game. More specifically, my collision detection code wasn’t working on my new game, and the dodgeballs would only bump into the player and not destroy it. I kept going back and forth between the two Unity projects checking out the codes and couldn’t figure out what was wrong. It was getting very annoying because you can’t have two Unity projects opened at the same time so whenever I wanted to open one, the other would close, and then I would have to open the previous one again and it was just becoming very tedious. Eventually I found out that I didn’t set the objects as triggers and that solved the problem. All that trouble because of one little detail! Right now I’m trying to get a score board in and finish up the basis of the game, then I’ll proceed with making the other levels with different challenges the player will face. 

Since my dodgeball game got a lot of positive reception during week 3’s critique, I decided to expand on it for my final project. During its original critique, many people gave tons of suggestions on what to add to the game and how to make it more fun and challenging. I decided to use those suggestions and implement them into the game as add-ons such as power ups and power downs, which will appear on the field of my game. After my pitch, Patrick suggested the idea of instead of just one ongoing level, there should be multiple levels with different challenges. I honestly never thought of that idea and I’m considering going in that direction. The first level could be a basic “get to know the controls” level, and then transition to the next level after a certain amount of time. There are multiple possibilities and ideas I can use to make each level unique and challenging in its own way. One level could have the enemy dodgeballs move at a faster rate, and maybe different level could have obstacles in your way to make dodging harder. The power ups/ power downs idea seemed to be a hit so I will definitely be adding those into the levels. My main priority however is to add a timer and scoreboard to this game, since I wasn’t able to add that in for the original game. Overall, I’m excited to get started on this game. I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to code all of this stuff I want in but I’m going to give it my best try.
And remember, you dodge or you DIE

I thought making a clicker game would be a lot simpler than our previous projects. Man was I wrong. I’m not a big fan of idle games since I find them kind of boring (with the exception of button mashing games), so I wanted to try to make something really fun. The hardest part about this project was coming up with an idea. I realize from these past projects that I always want to try to make games with these complex ideas, but I don’t have the skill level to implement them, so I end up wasting so much time trying to figure out codes I don’t know how to attempt and end up with less time building the actual game. I ended up decided on a sort of combination lock game with colors, where you have to continuously click on the buttons (which change color with every click) and try to figure out the correct color sequence in the least amount of clicks possible. Not the most fun game, but a decent puzzle game in my opinion. By the time of the critique, however, the game was only half done, with only the color changing objects working with no end result, but in the end I was able to figure out a code to get the result I wanted. Thanks again Patrick for the help!

I realized that with seven buttons and seven colors on each button, the possibilities for a combination is incredibly high, so some people suggested I add some sort of hint to give to the player. Although someone did say to just keep it as is and make them guess haha. My initial idea was to make the color sequence the colors of the rainbow, since I assumed that would be most people’s first guess. A couple people actually did guess correctly without my assistance. But in the end I decided to add in a hint to make the game a little easier.

This particular project has been very difficult for me. Not only with the coding, but also just thinking of an idea of what kind of game to build. I was having a hard time deciding what I wanted my game to be about, and what kind of levels my game would have. Since we started building this project around Halloween, I eventually became inspired to do something Halloween themed, or just something spooky looking. I looked on TurboSquid and found some great free models of gravestones and pumpkins, which I will put into different levels of the game.

I also got inspired by Professor LeMieux’s tutorial level with the dark area with dead trees and the open shack. My idea for my game is to be something similar to that but with its own tweaks. Before the Halloween idea, I was considering having some levels with obstacles. Something like a death trap kind of game where you have to avoid all these shapes and objects, and if you touch them you lose and have to restart the level. However, I feel like I’m pressed for time and that would take a lot longer than this current idea. I’m still having trouble with some of the coding so I’m glad I scrapped that idea, however, I feel like that would have been more fun to play. My game is still incomplete (and has no name yet :’D) mainly because of coding issues, but I’m hoping it turns out well.

Finally a game I can be proud of! However, just like the last game, I was getting very frustrated with the coding. I wanted the dodgeballs in my game to move on their own so I looked up countless tutorials on how to make objects move randomly. At first I was looking for something to project a ping pong effect for the balls so that when they hit the walls they would ricochet. However, all of the codes that produced a ping pong effect weren’t working for me so I researched other options. Eventually I came across a video on how to make objects move randomly using NavMeshAgent and I can honestly say I like how it turned out. It wasn’t initially what I had planned, but with this code it added a complete randomness and unpredictability to my game, which with ping pong someone could strategize by seeing where the balls would bounce off. Here the balls move (or don’t move for a few seconds) in complete randomness, which threw off all of the players. And with the feedback I received, a lot of people liked that unpredictability. It made the game more challenging and anxiety inducing. I received a lot of positive comments about my game and I’m extremely happy that people found it so addicting! I found it hilarious that I was getting suggestions on how to make the game more challenging, such as having the plain shrink  over time or add in more dodgeballs as time goes on. The one thing I regret not putting was a timer/score board. I feel that receiving a high score would definitely give the player a motive to keep playing, however not having one at the moment didn’t stop people from constantly restarting the game.

A little late but here is my dev log for my text based game. Coding is not my friend and it definitely didn’t like me when attempting to build this game. No matter how closely I followed the tutorials, something would go wrong or some error would pop up that I just didn’t know how to fix. With the multitude of errors I was receiving and with some family issues that was happening over the weekend, I had little to no time to work on the assignment. And with the time I managed to get to actually work on the game, errors would just keep popping up. The coding was becoming so frustrating that I eventually gave up so I could work on the current game (project 3). What I wanted to make for my text based game was basically a locked in a room type of game. Essentially the player would wake up in the middle of a room with a locked door. The player would then find a key, however that key doesn’t open the door. Instead, it opens a chest or a drawer that opens and they find another key (which also doesn’t open the door, but something else in the room). Essentially it was going to be a series of finding different keys that would open different things in the room and then eventually the player finds the key to open the door. The game would then end with the player opening the door only for them to wake up again in the same situation from the beginning. I thought it would be funny to make the player go through all these tedious events just for it to all be pointless. Too bad I never got a chance to finish it. Oh well.

Creating just one environment for a game proved to be a lot more difficult that I had anticipated. The process was a bit frustrating, but I think that was mostly due to my lack of unity skills. I was a bit unorganized with my materials and assets so that made this project take a lot longer to build. I’m a fan of RPG games so I wanted to emulate something where there were multiple paths and hidden treasures to find. Since this is a small project I just added a fork in the road with two paths. I’m not particularly pleased with the finished product however. When I look at it I wish I made the plane bigger so there could be more room for exploring. But for what it is I think it ended up ok as a first game. I haven’t had anyone critique my environment yet, but I hope that they notice the hints I left for the right path to take. I tried to leave subtle hints like a different colored tree trunk and an off colored patch of grass to signify the right path to take. Some challenges I faced were adding all the trees to emulate a dense forest. Because I kept adding so many, it was hard to place the new trees and edit their shapes and sizes. As I was building this environment, everything just felt so cluttered. But when I simulate the game I actually wish I added more. Again, my main gripe with this end product is that I wish I made the plane bigger, but aside from that I think it turned out ok for a first attempt.