Our Last Hope (Is Some Kid) - Blog Post 1

Sprint 1

So far, the process of building a prototype is quite different from others I’m used to because of the use of Trello. It is a concept that took some time to figure out, and I admittedly don’t have it perfected yet. The difficulty isn’t with remembering to move cards and where to move them to. It’s with making cards that are different enough to be considered different tasks, and not too long to be considered an epic user story.

The biggest issue that my team and I encountered, and is still partially dealing with, is setting up GitHub. Initially, I created a repository on my Macbook, but one team member was having issues pushing and pulling. We decided to have a different team member create a repository on his Windows computer instead. Still, only two of us can use GitHub properly, so we are adding levels to the main Unity project by making them prefabs and sharing them on Google Drive.

For the first part of the sprint, a lot of my attention initially went towards setting up a collaborative workspace and making the design treatment. I created a Google Drive, a Discord, and a GitHub. Unfortunately, GitHub created a lot of issues, which made it hard to combine everyone’s work into one Unity project at first. All members of the team worked together on the design treatment, so that way the plan for the game would be clear among all team members. The treatment asked for some concept art to be added, so my teammate and I worked on a couple simple sketches of elements of the game that represented the aesthetic feel, and even some humorous aspects that we wished for in the game.

I moved on to creating the paper prototype. It took some time to figure out how to translate a 3D idea into a 2D space, especially when a big part of the game is meant to involve a unique movement mechanic. I settled on making a grid with some enemies and items that you would pick up similar to a Roll20 campaign layout. Creating rules that were simple enough to learn in a couple minutes, but detailed enough to play the prototype correctly was challenging. It’s very hard to remove my own perspective from the equation of a rule sheet, since I already know how the game is meant to be played. I decided a good thing to do would be to playtest the prototype a day after completing it and its rule sheet, so that way the rules aren’t as fresh in my mind. It helped with making small changes before the playtest day. During the day of the playtest, I had to add a health pack since the first two playtesters died, and that improved the experience of the game for the other playtesters.

After completing the prototype, I moved to working in Unity. I created a particle system for the vent and the climbable walls, so when a player is playing the game, they would be less likely to miss a key element in completing a level. I haven’t worked with particle systems in Unity before, but it was a very easy thing to figure out for the purposes of the game.

I started on creating a skatepark, that would help teach players the basics on how to use a skateboard when it’s equipt. The limited shapes available in Unity made it a bit more difficult to figure out how to go about making something like this, so I had to think outside the box. It is not complete yet, but I will continue to work on it in the next sprint. I also did not add health packs around the level yet, even though I had it assigned.