(working title)
Choosing a game engine
One of the first things I had to decide was which game engine I would use. I wanted the game to look 2D as possible but within a 3D environment and decided to work with the Unity engine.
The first stage was getting a working moving avatar to use as a placeholder and blocking out the level. I started with a simple sphere and attaching a camera to follow the avatar at a 45 degree top down view.
Once I was happy with the basic controls for the avatar I started planning out the level and possible ways that the avatar would interact with the environment.
I did a rough layout of what the level may consist of in Photoshop to get a rough idea and use as a guide line for the blocking out.
Blocking the level out was done in 3Ds Max and then exported into Unity in FBX format.
After working on the level block out and taking into account the amount of time it would take to build I decided to shorten the size of the level. As seen in my ordinal proposal I wanted to have a scarp yard theme to the level but after working on the blocking I decided to change the style to a more construction/worksite theme. Keeping this in mind I carried on with the blocking out and exported it as one object into the Unity engine to use a guard line of where objects were to be placed.
Now that I had working level layout and a playable avatar I started looking into overall art style for the game. Looking into recent games that had a 2D look to them such as The Tales of Monkey Island, I wanted to keep the game within that style and moved on to develop the main character. I started with some basic silhouettes and built them up until I was happy with a final robot silhouette.
I then used the silhouette as a reference to model the robot in 3Ds max and added a bold red with thick black outlines to give it more of a 2D appearance rather then 3D.
For the level assets I looked over a range of reference images I had found and began to build these assets using the references but in a more simplified model
Once the static level assets where finished I started on the animated and interactive objects. With the level being construction yard themed I wanted to keep the objects that could hurt the robot fit into the environment rather then random enemies/foes found in most games.
With the assets ready and a new character to replace the placeholder object the next step was arranging the level to fit the blocked layout. As I replaced the blocked out level with the newly made assets I made a small amount of changes to the ordinal layout.
I also added some extra details to the outside of the level to give it the feel that it was a construction yard in the centre of a city at night. I made a simple city silhouette in Photoshop.
Evaluation
Aspects of play for me, was a massive learning curve and really helped me have a better understanding of how games work as a whole. I was already working with the Unity engine and the project gave me a goal to achieve for myself and helped me push my skills to their limits. One of the main areas I enjoyed the most was the 3D element of the game which was to create low polygon models that can be seen in today’s games. Making the models low polygon with basic structures to keep with the style and mechanics of the game was the most challenging part and really pushed me out of my comfort zone. Although the scripting part of the project was difficult and got quite frustrating at times it made me look at the way games are made in a whole new light. Nowadays games are really taken for granted because one of their main aspects is the way they look and not how good the game play is. But now looking at these games knowing the amount of time that has been spent scripting them and getting the main mechanics working properly, I can see just how hard creating a full length game could be. Overall I was satisfied with how my game turned out. I think I got a good balance between the visual aspect and game play of the project. Some of the elements I would have liked to changed would have been to spend more time working on the scripting and game play because a lot of what I originally had intended the game to be like was missed out.
