As we are coming up on Alpha, we have been working to prepare and finish a level for our game. In terms of gameplay, we have decided that we will have different sections of our game, where in one level the father and daughter are separated and want to find each other, and in another level they will find each other and work cooperatively to escape the forest. The mechanics of the daughter and father will still stay the same throughout the levels.
The monster is seen by both the father and daughter, and each will have to tackle it differently. The daughter has to hide from the monster, while the father can shoot at it. The animation for the monster movement has been completed, and has been done in After Effects as opposed to traditional frame by frame. Because we chose a design that is sort of an amalgamation of body parts, there isn’t a traditional move cycle and therefore contains more freaky-looking flailing motions. The animations also do not have to contain different directions of movement, as the limbs are pulling in every direction. Along with the monster animation complete, there are a few sound effects for the monster as well.
Monster Nearby:
Light Growl 1:
Light Growl 2:
Monster Scream
For the design of the level, there are level concepts for the different levels we will have in our game, so we have an idea of the different lighting, color, and placement of the props throughout the game.
Along with level design, there has also been an outline made of the game’s overarching plot and levels. Therefore, we have an idea of roughly what we want to convey throughout the game. We have also started to make the level we will show for Alpha. This level involves two paths, one for the father and the other for the daughter, in the woods during nighttime. This was made using the Terrain tool in Unity. Parts of the path have been decorated with a variety of nature objects, such as mushrooms, branches and rocks using free assets from the Asset Store. We have also placed objects that the father and daughter will interact with, such as a fence that needs to be shot, and a note that can be read.
In terms of changes that have occurred throughout the game, the first is that the father shooting animation has been implemented and works in all 8 directions. We have also changed the post processing settings to get a nicer effect, as there were strange color artifacts and therefore wanted to reduce them by tweaking the post process material parameters. Another change is that a small bug where the dialogue displayed incorrectly has been fixed.
We also had multiple fixes regarding the camera. One problem that was fixed involved the camera clipping into the ground if the player was walking up or down a hill. A script that moves the camera based on the terrain height has been created to mitigate this. Also, there were many tall trees that would get in the way of the camera and therefore not allow the player to see the daughter or father. Therefore, a transparency for objects that appear between camera and protagonists was set. This was implemented using C# code with standard material attached to the objects, and changing the alpha channel. However, there is an issue in which the tree objects in the scene are part of the terrain and therefore cannot be taken in as a gameObject.
Finally, music has been made to fit the gameplay. Two different pieces of music have been made. The first piece is intensive with a lot of instruments to represent a fast speed and a rainy forest. There have been some sound effects added to boost up the atmosphere of getting lost and rain getting heavier and the world getting darker. The second piece is more moody, and creates a slower and sadder style.
Two instruments, the piano and cello, are mainly used in this portion, to represent the daughter and father respectively. The beginning portion contains a solo of each instrument. It then transitions and the instruments start to weave together, showing that they are trying to approach each other, but fail as the melody doesn’t converge. The instruments continue to try to connect until they finally converge into the same melody.
In the future, we will want to possibly have the second piece of music work so the music of each instrument is in a separate channel for some portions of it, so each player hears a different soundtrack. We also want to fix the issue regarding the tree transparency, by possibly replacing all of the trees in the terrain with the same type of Prefab gameObject at the beginning of the game being loaded. However, this could make the game run slower so we will conduct more research on how to solve it. Work will also begin on UI, along with any assets that will be needed for Alpha next week. We will also continue working on level design and add more interactables for each player by Alpha.