Devlog 2: Development

Development Process

When starting the development process, we first looked at existing games for inspiration. The game ‘Hylics 2’ uses a claymation / mixed media style that we were immediately inspired by, and chose to use mixed media in our own game. We were also inspired by games that use dark humor like ‘LISA’, to inspire our narrative and character interaction. From this we brainstormed ways that we could set up a world that has a surrealist feel and offers players an experience that feels strange and intriguing. Considering the narrative that we planned out, we planned out how the characters and environment would look, using some temporary assets in the beginning. The main concern at the start of the process was getting the images for the player animation, because we knew that the process of setting the animator would be complicated. 

Opening the project in Unity, we set up player movement and tried to implement double jump. Ethan worked on handling the player movement and getting the double jump to work with consistency. Meanwhile Ava, worked on enemy aggro / enemy AI. About halfway through the development process we realized that the double jump felt awkward and was inconsistent, so the double jump and the player movement scripts had to be rewritten. The enemy AI also had to be changed due to rotation issues with the enemy sprite animations. Though these setbacks were frustrating, we were able to get a better overall feel for player movement and enemy interaction with the changes. 

Due to the setbacks we faced during the process and general issues with code and connecting different scripts, we had to cut back on the narrative and story progression. We planned on this game taking longer than the deadline so instead of trying to condense the narrative we chose to create a smaller demo that gives a condensed version of the game’s mechanics and environment. 

What went right

When working on the concept for the game, we knew that we wanted to have a main character that would have complex animations. Using claymation, we were able to have diverse character movement, such as a flip on double jump or falling based on if the player is grounded. We were able to successfully create these images using a clay model and then line up the animations in Photoshop. This was a very time consuming process, however, the fluidity of the movement adds to the feel of the game. The animator in Unity can become very complex, it took a lot of trial and error to get the animations to play at the right moments and they could still be refined.  

The art and style of the game was overall successful, even though we had to use some placeholder assets for the time being. We combined 2D drawings, 3D models, real-life images and clay sculpting. The mixed media design creates a distinctive feel to the game, it has a handmade quality that gives the game an innocent and wholesome feel. We juxtapose this with some eerie scenes and creepy enemies that add to the surrealist style. The environment is dense with assets in the background, middleground, and foreground so the player perceives a bountiful world. 

Though it is a buggy feature in our current version, a success is the ‘juice’ when fighting enemies. We managed to feature feedback on hitting enemies and seperate death animation for the player and each enemy. We managed to achieve a sense of power when the enemies are defeated. The problem is that the way animations are set up, the hurt animations on the enemies can override the death animation and so the players can miss out on that gratification. Overall though, when in proper shape, the hurt and death animations make for a juicer fighting experience.

What went wrong

While we did learn a lot along the way, there was and still is a lot of (expected) struggle on the coding front. A large problem that is yet to be solved is hit detection and its effects on the HealthManager script. There is a seperate Invulnerability script that plays the frame after taking damage, but there is an issue where enemies are able to take two damage instead of one in a single frame. There is also another problem with Invulnerability where if the player restarts after a game over, they become entirely invincible. There are also weird interactions with the enemies where attacking at certain points or jumping at certain points also grants complete invulnerability. The list goes on with bugs, but this is the process we have to work through, no matter how simple an idea may be.

With this project, the scope was something that was constantly changing, and so to attempt to reach deadlines, there were drastic changes in what was and what was not included. This led to plenty of corners cut and assets made without levels and code to support their existence. We are aware of the importance to whitebox before any assets, but we got carried away by the artistic direction we were taking and went ahead and put a vast majority of our time into art anyway, which ended up being the most notable part of our game at the expense of gameplay.

This led into another setback of the current demo which is a lack of level design. The prompt for the project was to make a platformer and that was not exactly the end result, but we believe, despite some bugs, the groundwork is there to go on and make a good platformer with an engaging story and characters. The way is it, there are no checkpoints so it was difficult to make platforms with consequence without it being frustrating or too punishing because death sends you back all the way to the beginning.

What we learned

This project, we both have both gained a newfound confidence on our coding ability. We did not use nearly as many tutorials as for previous projects, we implemented our own ideas for feature additions and bug fixing. A large part of knowledge gained is utilizing the ability to getComponents and Coroutines, as well as implementing variables used in the animator, due to how much animation went into the art of this game.

A large lesson to be learned is to never again underestimate the amount of time animation will drain from development time. We did get a bit carried away and skipped some important whiteboxing steps and went straight to doing claymation, as funny as that sounds. This came back around to haunt us because it required lots of time not only to make but also to tweak so that it properly matches with the game movement. In the end it was a general success but was just too much for the deadlines we were working with. 

Group Roles & Responsibilities 

We both did pretty much a completely equal amount of work for each aspect of the game, however there were some parts that one of us took over more of than the other. An example being Ava did most of the work in the animator, while Ethan did a majority of the scripting. Overall though, we did not assign any roles to particular members.

Future Development

Since the beginning of the project, the plan was to develop this far into the future. Due to this, we were not sure where to draw lines in terms of scope, but now that development is on our own time, scope is less of an issue. After critique, the idea of shifting genres was brought up, so this is something we are taking into consideration. For now though in the action-platformer version we have plans for a narrative with plenty of humorous gags and boss battles, in the fashion of a game like Hollow Knight or Cuphead. The list of features has gotten quite large, so attached below is what we have as of right now.