Alpha

This week for my project I worked on getting the timer and triggers functioning properly so that It was actually a playable game instead of driving around the terrain. I also worked on adding buildings and better roads and paths and a train station to create the city portion of the terrain. nothing has gone wrong so far while i'm working on my game but I would like to fix the way that you can see the grass developing as your driving towards it while playing I had originally thought I had already addressed and fixed this problem but I've began noticing it a lot and it makes the roads slightly confusing to follow when the outline of the road and the grass is only showing as the players driving by it.

This week coming I need to work on respawning if you get stuck somewhere over a couple of seconds as if you have a bad crash you can get stuck somewhere you don't have to restart the whole game when you have time left on the countdown.

I am starting to worry about meeting targets I don't know if its just that I'm spending far too long on one specific thing I want to complete but I am starting to worry if I'll manage to get everything that I originally planned complete. I am really enjoying the process though.

Terrain

Game being Played

Buildings in game

First Playable

This week started of pretty shitty with unity, it crashed and everything I had created for my game already had disappeared  so I had to start from scratch again and make sure I press save every time I move the mouse. Other than that everything I've attempted so far has been working perfectly. I think I was getting a bit distracted in trying to make the terrain look good tho instead of firstly trying to make sure I could get all the rules and the actual game itself would work. So I haven't really met my target quite yet but I am happy with how it's looking so far. This week I made the terrain and track and added trees and grass and the car, I also added fences and dirt to make the starting position. and I wanted it to look like the player was leaving their own front garden. I got a bit carried away trying to find shrubs and flowers for my game. I then added a canvas, panel and text box and made the countdown box in the top right hand corner. I am also halfway through building shops and city like buildings for further on in the track when the player gets closer to the Rotunda.

Start point for player

 

The next step is add the HUD with the wife's happy meter and change the appearance of the car to be brighter. I need to try and remind myself that I can fix up little details of the terrain and overall appearance at the end and to try and push for the rules and coding to be complete before getting distracted on small details.

Prototype

This week I began trying to prototype my game, the main aspects i was trying to prototype was the look and feel of the game. I created the terrain and added in a grass and rock material and a black road like material that I will be using for the roads. I also added in the trees and grass to make it look more real. I had a long browse on the assets store to try and find a skybox I thought would fit with my game and picked a bright colourful sunny one which I think fits nicely especially  because of the fact I wanted it to look like a city and this particular skybox has buildings in the background.
I also spent a while trying to decide what size the car should be in comparison to the roads. I think most of it looks well but there are some things that i visioned looking slightly different that I'm not completely figuring out yet.

My game so far.

I want it to look more colourful, with it really popping out how bright it is which I am finding slightly difficult as when I try and brighten the skybox everything goes white. I'm currently unsure if this is because of me needing another look at the skybox tutorial because I'm doing it wrong or whether I need a different one all together. I also wanted the road material to look smoother and more road like but for some reason its unity isn't giving me the option to change the metallic or smoothness of the material when I add it to the terrain. The final issue I'm currently having is that in the console errors I have the same error appearing 999+ times that appeared after I made the C# script for the car and main camera and I really have no idea what the issue is as on visual studio the code is perfect and everything works the way I want it to. I'm just weary to continue and let issues build up.

I'm actually really enjoying creating my game so far and it's really rewarding when something you've spent a while trying to look nice or work properly works. In relation to meeting my targets I think I'm a little bit behind as I thought my game would be further along but I'm going to really work this week and get large chuck done!

Final GDD

I have completed my GDD and attached a link below I hope it is really clear how my game will work by reading this.

My plan is to work weekly on Unity gradually creating this game until the end of the semester. I'm going to follow the Jimmy Vegas tutorials he has up on creating a racing game to help create this and use a lot of the Unity we have already learnt to create surrounding and the environmental aspects of the game.

my DunDoc Site: https://www.dundoc.com/project/4789

Game Vision Statement

Brief description:

My game is a 3D world race car game called "The Rotunda Run" for the PC. 

My game is a time based game. where the player is driving their pregnant wife to hospital but only has a certain amount of time to do so. If the player hits people or walls their time will decrease but when they find any gems on their journey they can get extra time added onto their countdown. The game is lost if time runs out and the player hasn't managed to reach the Rotunda with their pregnant wife. As opposed to if the player reaches the destination within the time slot they win the game. I got some inspiration for this sort of game from 'The Simpsons Hit and Run' and 'Grand Theft Auto' These are both two of my favourite types of games so I would enjoy being able to create something slightly similar. 

Simpsons Hit and Run

Genre:

My game falls under the genre of Racing. It is a car racing game.

Gameplay:

The game is a single player time based racing game. It will start with a menu screen with settings and a start button. It will then go to a screen where you can select your type\colour of your car and then you will begin the game. There will be a countdown from 3 to begin the time and then it's up to the player to try and reach certain gems to gain more time and to try not to crash. the controls will be:

SPACE bar to drive

> to turn left

< to turn right 

ENTER to brake 

BACKSPACE to reverse.

The gameplay follows a narrative there is a little freedom for choice but not so much that it changes the entire game for the player.

Resources:

For creating this game the main resources i'll need are:

Time

Tutorials

Unity

The internet 

Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMRhUK7bY7w

https://poki.com/en/car-racing

 

Game Idea Research

My game idea that I would like to develop and create is a 3D car racing game. The Story of my game is the player is trying to rush his pregnant wife to hospital to give birth but is being chased by the police while doing so. My idea is that the game will start with the main player and his wife getting into their car and trying to race to the hospital through the busy traffic and crossing pedestrians  and if any red lights, drive too fast or any road rules are broken the police start pursuing you. Your wife is adamant that she will not give birth in the car so your aim is to ignore and escape the police until you arrive at the hospital. If the police catch you you've lost. Meanwhile there is a meter with your wives happiness/comfort at the top of the screen that you must also try and keep high, this meter decreases if you drive too crazy crashing into things or going over bumps or driving too slow. If you get to the hospital without being cause then you have won the game.

The Mechanics I am hoping to use for this game are: Sound effects and music, Controls and score.
For sound effects and music I want to have fast paced exciting music player in the background of the game to create an the fast paced atmosphere for the game and also have sound effects like horns from other cars and sirens for police cars in pursuit. A good example of sound effect from other cars and police is from the game Grand Theft Auto.

My idea in relation to controls are:
> is turn left
< Is turn right
SPACE bar is drive
ENTER in to brake
BACKSPACE is to reverse.

The idea behind the scoring is the have a meter at the top of the screen with the colours green yellow and red and a photo of the wife's face on top of the meter that starts of in green every time the player drives too slow or crashes the wife's face moves further down the meter to yellow and eventually to red, if her face reaches the bottom of the red on the meter then the player has lost the game. The player can also increase this meter by driving fast and not crashing. I am taking inspiration from the game Cooking Craze which is an ios game. In Cooking Craze if you don't serve the customers quickly enough their meter goes down until eventually they leave the shop.

Cooking Craze customer score

In conclusion this is an Idea I would love feedback on whether it could work or not and be able to develop more.

Game Brainstorm

1st Game idea:

 After brainstorming and researching different genre's of games my first idea is to create a car racing game. Car racing games have always been my favourite types of games especially 'Mario Kart's' as I've mentioned in a previous post. I feel like because I like these sort of games I would understand what a player would want when playing my game so it would help when developing. I found a really useful article when researching that goes into huge depth on how to create a race car game  and all the steps that need to be taken to have a good game, https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcgt/2015/839721/. I also found and watched some tutorials on how I could go about creating this type of game by Jimmy Vegas.

If I was to make this game I would be hoping to take inspiration from Mario Kart's and create my own cartoon like characters and backgrounds making it colourful and exiting. Overall I find race car games fun, fast paced and exiting so it would be cool to be able to make my own

Race Car Game Tutorial

2nd Game idea:

My second idea for my game is a 3D shooter game. Shooter games are one of the oldest genre's of games some good examples are: Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Halo and so many more. I've never enjoyed shooter games very much and was never very good at them when my brother allowed me to play them on his Playstation. I would always be the very first player killed and was horrific at aiming. I'd like to create a first player shooter game where the first player is walking around a world with a gun and has to kill their enemy's.  I'd like to be able to make this as a PC game to see if its any easier for example I played Fornight on my brother's playstation and was atrocious but when I played it on my phone I was so much better and enjoyed playing much more.


Some useful links i found for first shooter games are:
https://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/124632/gaming/game_design_tips_for_first_person_shooter_games.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fGB2H1AGP8 - A tutorial on how to create a FPS game.

3rd Game idea:

My third idea is a 3D Adventure world game with challenges or puzzles along the way. My favourite adventure world games were all played on the Playstation 2 some examples are: Grand Theft Auto, the Bratz games and my favourite...  Dogslife. Dogslife was a 3d game where first player was a dog, players could roam around the world as they pleased and then they could also choose to complete tasks and missions along the way to progress. I liked this game as you could challenge yourself in the tasks but if you felt like just exploring the games world you could also do that. If I was to create this sort of game I would be taking inspiration from Dogslife but changing the storyline, tasks, characters and graphics.

Dogslife Packaging

Here's a tutorial that I found that could help me create this sort of game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFguvztl2nA

4th game idea:

My fourth idea is a 3D or 2D platform game. The type of platform game I like and would want to create is an endless runner game. These sort of games are the most popular ios and andriod games and are very addictive, I've definitely spent hours playing endless runner games trying to get a better high score either for myself or to beat my friends high scores some of the most popular were: Temple Run, Subway Surfers and Jetpack Joyride. My personal favourite that I've played is Endless Lake, I find it exiting and different from other ones I have played as your character can multiply while your playing making it harder to concentrate and survive. If I was to go with this idea I would like to take inspiration from endless lake and have something that other platform games don't.

While researching games like this I found lot's of useful links that would really help me develop this sort of game:
https://www.androidauthority.com/lets-build-a-simple-endless-runner-game-in-unity-759135/
This link isn't useful at the moment because the author has to update his own website and links but he has commented on the page saying he will fix the problems so I chose to include it because the images he has are what I would hope my game would look similar to.
https://forum.unity.com/threads/creating-an-3d-endless-runner-game-like-temple-run-in-unity-3d-using-c.469865/

Endless Lake Game

  I had started trying to make one of these sort of games during the summer and had a sort of fixed mindset about it so when it got difficult I would put it off or avoid it so it would be great to be able to look back and say I've made it.





Some other useful links:
https://www.thocp.net/software/games/reference/genres.htm