Yasmin's Computer Game Arts Journey

One I had created my storyboard, one sheet and walkthrough game map and interactions the next step was the fun part, to make the game!

The Look and Feel

I started off creating the3D models in Maya using the skills that I had learnt previously, by making just one model at a time I was then able to import this separately into Unity and have more freedom to move bits around within the Unity game engine instead of worrying about modelling everything to scale within Maya.

For this walkthrough game brief I was allowed to use basic materials to colour my assets but no textures so I made sure to be able to colour most things individually, making leaves green and bark brown, etc. I also added a skybox. This would help to add to the atmosphere of the game as that's what this whole unit is being marked on.



I also added lights and particles to add to the effect of the game as I had modelled some lantern lights to line to stone pathway, including both a light and a flame particle effect added to the realism and the old-age feel of the game as well as making it a great light source for the game as it was set at night. I added a script to enabled these lights to flicker when the player came close to the light to make it seem even more realistic, as if the flames were flickering in the wind. I could change the radius of these lights so that they shone brightly only on the objects nearby.


We needed audio within our game so I chose to have an old-style radio show to play on the speakers of the game, lined along the pathway to play an eerily happy country tune. By changing the 3D sound settings of this audio I was able to make it so that it went very loud when the player was near and quieter as the player went further away from the object. Having this knowledge was then very useful as I used it on a lot of different objects, such as the trees rustling, the fire lanterns crackling and, of course, the crying sounds coming from the well.


The Interactivity

For this game I used C# to code the interactions that I planned out during the storyboarding phase within it. We needed to have at least 3 interactions within our game. The main interactions that I had planned to use were: Doors opening and closing, being able to pick up an axe and use it to destroy the well within the game so I could jump down into the cave below and then interacting with the radio found within the cave as the source of the crying to play an audio clip that tells the player the "Wake up".

At first i was worried that I might have been a tad too ambitious, but with the help of the Unity forums and the internet (thank you Stack Overflow) it didn't take me long to start getting my head around the basic syntax of C#, especially since I have worked using Javascript before, and I went a little overboard on the interactions, adding the flicker script to make the lights flicker as well as scripts to trigger sound effects such as white noise when the player is in the beginning of the game in the house and triggers a light flicker and in the cave near the end. I also added more immersion to the game overall by adding a text UI to show the protagonists thoughts throughout the gameplay, from his bafflement when he first realises he doesn't know where he is, to his shouts down to the 'woman' crying in the well. I started the game by disabling the players movement and adding a dark image on a panel so that the player has to focus on the text that displays on the screen as the protagonist wakes up groggy, thinking he is in his own house and then gasps as he realises that he's not in his house anymore; the dark panel is destroyed and the player is then able to move again to progress through the narrative of the game.



The hardest part of the coding interactions for me was the whole interaction for picking up the axe, having it physically showing in front of the player, and the using it to explode the well. At first I wasn't quite sure how it was going to work or even what the syntax might be for this but after searching the Unity forums I found that I could use Destory (gameObject); to completely remove an object out of the world and instantiate as a way to create an explosion in the wells place as a game object to make it appear as if I had blown up the well. But of course I couldn't have the script on the well as this object would then be destroyed and I needed the same script to start the radio at the bottom of the well play the crying sounds so that it would sound more realistic and eerie once the player jumped down there so I attached the script to some rocks just below the well and make the collider box a lot bigger so that I could still click on the well for this all to happen. It might not have been the cleanest way of applying this interaction but it's the best way that I could think of.

For my 3 minute walkthrough game I have created this simple storyboard for me to refer to when creating the game. As this game can be no longer than 3 minutes I made sure to keep it simple, however I did include at least 3 different interactions within the game for me to create through using C# in Unity3D.

The game will start with the player waking up in a small, cartoon-like cottage, preferably with some oddly upbeat music playing that the player can optionally leave on or turn off before leaving the cottage. Upon leaving the house they will then find a cobbled pathway with speakers and other cottages aligning either side, like a small quaint village with no people. The player can hear muffled commands coming from the speakers but can't quite make them out and the protagonist will have some text pop up narrating how he wonders where everyone is. Walking a little further down the cobbled path the player will then hear distant screams coming from a boarded up well marked 'Danger'. To open the well and see what the source of the screaming is they have to carry on down the cobbled path until they reach a fenced off forest with some cut down tree stumps, where they will find an axe and be able to pick it up and use it on the boarded up well. However, upon descending down the well into a dark and dingy cave they realise that the noise is actually coming from an old record player. The atmosphere in the cave is to be a lot more spooky and unnerving than that of the village to make the player nervous about approaching the record player and why these cries for help are being played. Once the player approaches the record player and stops it playing all goes suddenly black and a voice calls out saying; 'WAKE UP'. That is then the end of the walkthrough and the introduction to Coma!

For the Gameplay and Interactivity unit within Computer Games Art I am going to be building a walkthrough game using my own modelled assets and scene in Maya and then importing it into Unity3D to create at least 3 different interactive elements within the 3 minute walkthrough game. The aim is to create a certain atmosphere using only the greybox assets, lights, audio and of course the interactions themselves.

The game I have decided to make is called Coma. Above is the One Sheet for the game which explains in detail what the narrative if the game is as well as the more technical aspects:

The X (simply the blurb of the game):
When trapped inside your own imagination there's no knowing what lays around the corner. Can you follow the voices of your loved ones to find your way back to reality?

The 4 Pillars (What defines the gameplay of your game):

• No weapons to be found or used within the game.
• No health meter so cannot die. However the player can 'get lost within the coma', never returning to reality.
• Can't hold more than one object at a time.
• Collect drawings within the game to help the player recall how they got in the coma in the first place. These pictures can be viewed in the pause menu.