University Projects

On balance I believe this project was successful in telling a story through gameplay, asset design and the audio used. I created a successful platformer that allows the player to walk, jump, defend and collect items. On reflection there were elements that due to time constraints I wasn't able to implement and therefore I need to work on my time management skills. Throughout this project I have learnt that I need to improve coding in C#. I have realised that when writing code I am not using the most efficient or "cleanest" statements. For example when collected items in my script, I wrote ten if statements for each heart collected. Although this worked and was simple to understand, in future I would attempt to use a loop and array to run through each statement for each count number as this would save me time overall. Unfortunately due to my limited coding knowledge there were a few aspects of the game that I couldn't get to work. This included a health bar/hurt bar...

BLACKTHORNPROD (2018).  COOL DIALOG SYSTEM - EASY UNITY AND C# TUTORIAL.  [Online Video]. April 8th. Available from:   https://youtu.be/f-oSXg6_AMQ . [Accessed: 10th May 2019].   BOWL AND CEREAL (2017).  Unity Tutorial: Playing Audio (Music and Sound Effects) . [Online Video]. February 7th. Available from: https://youtu.be/egxNXuwf0_g.  [Accessed: 10th May 2019]. BRACKEYS (2018a).  2D Animation in Unity (Tutorial) . [Online Video]. August 5th. Available from: https://youtu.be/hkaysu1Z-N8. [Accessed: 10th May 2019].    BRACKEYS (2018b).  2D Movement in Unity (Tutorial) . [Online Video]. July 15th. Available from: https://youtu.be/dwcT-Dch0bA. [Accessed: 10th May 2019].   BRACKEYS (2014).  1. How to make a 2D Platformer - Basics - Unity Tutorial . [Online Video]. April 26th. Available from: https://youtu.be/UbPiCgCkHTE. [Accessed: 10th May 2019]. BRACKEYS (n.d.).  2D Mega Pack (Camera2DFollow.cs. and Parallaxing.cs...

While I was working many aspects of the game were changed or removed due to time constraints. Health Bar. NPC conversations became UI dialogue text. Was going to include a house (as shown on the Level Design). Movement Platforms. Count removed changed to dialogue text. Enemies that were going to attack the player. Orb was going to be the defense against attacks. Heart animation. No footstep or landing on platform sounds. Dialouge sounds became actual voice acting. Game over became cut scene. Title Screen became cut scene and dialogue. Ability to mute or pause the game. Two separate endings became one. Using a WiiMote controller. Should have set escape button to quit the game.

All assests used in my game were created and illustrated by myself using Adobe Illustrator. For the player character, I animated a walk, jump, defense and idle animation so that there was more variety. NPCs Player Character Collectible Item Scene Cut Scenes (All images/illustrations deisgned in this post were designed by myself both cut scenes were created by myself, own images/videos, 2019)

I created both cut scenes on Premiere Pro using simple effect controls and video effects to make each scene flow. I used the position, opacity and scale settings for the heart that transitions into the dragons body and used crossfade and dip to black for the video effects. I decided to add a cut scene because this was another way I could tell part of the story and a good final ending to the game. I felt like adding the cut scene added a conclusion to the game. (Screenshot of Premiere Pro Project, Own Image, 2019}

The sound and music for my game was created by Matt Burrows who studies BSc in Sound Design Technology at the University of Hertfordshire. I wanted to include sound and music to set the scene, as I believe that these elements can help to provide insight about the narrative without even playing the game. For example:  As my background was very dark, I wanted music that suited this dark setting and decided that cheerful sounds would not only confuse the player but not suit the tone of the game. Therefore Matt used minor chords when creating the music. The world is quite magical which is seen by the non-playable characters e.g. dragons, frogs, plants etc. and therefore a lot of reverb was added to the dialogue to give it a dream-like state. The jump, defensive orb and collectible sounds were primarily for player feedback so that they are aware that they have performed an action. As I wanted the game to sound more realistic than video gamey, Matt created all of the sounds/music f...

When creating my game I realised that I had created an imaginary world and doing so helps to build an atmosphere and setting. I believe that worldbuilding is important because it makes the player wonder what is going on in this world, outside of the narrative. The background choice for my game is quite dark in comparison to the player character. This is because this world is filled with negativity and despair. The main focus of this game is Dragona (the dragon) who also has quite a dark colour scheme to fit in with the world and because she is sad due to the loss of her husband (Darkus). In this magical world, it is common for there to be dragons, plants and frogs as these are creatures that be associated with scariness. (Own illustrations of background image and dragon character, own images, 2019) However these aren't the only characters in this world, the occasional human will appear. The girl has been raised by Dragona and wants to help her Mother fight the sadness s...

Creating a dark world that has become filled with darkness, due to the negativity that 'enemies' share with the main character by saying nasty things. Once warmth is collected, the level's background would begin to lighten up slowly to show that warmth and kindness can erase darkness. I began to like this story more so I decided to illustrate a background on Adobe Illustrator which became my main background for my game. (Illustrated background ideation, own image) However, I also wanted to incorporate some of the elements from my previous ideas. This included having a human as the main character as this would be more relatable to the audience. When designing the character, I decided that I wanted her to look quite simple but use very bright colours so that they would stand out from the background. Similar to the original flame idea, I wanted this character to be bright to represent warmth, brightness and hope. I made this clear by adding a firey gradient as the...

I used a combination of sketching freehand and sketching on Illustrator to create my characters. I practiced drawing a walk circle for my character so that I could edit her idle state on illustrator so that when she became animated she looked as though she was walking. (Freehand sketches, own images, 2019)

Sketching my level helped me to visualise my game. I changed my idea slightly where I thought there could be NPCs saying mean things to the main character and each time the character walked past these NPCs, it would increase the hurt bar UI element at the top of the screen. Once the hurt bar reaches its full capacity, the game ends. I also wanted there to be NPCs that you could interact with that say kind things showing that the world can be cruel but that there are some people that are kind. The hearts are collectable items that decrease your hurt bar as they bring warmth and kindness. 

We created a new 3D Unity project and enabled Vuforia in the project settings. We added an AR camera to the scene and ensured that the World Center Mode was set to 'DEVICE'. We created a new license on the development portal to get a new development (License) key for our new project. After pasting this into the Vuforia Engine Configuration settings, we added a database to our license so we could add a target. We added a 3D object, our .od file to this target and added this to the database. We then downloaded the database, making sure to select the Unity Editor as the development platform. We then imported this database into Unity. We added a 3D scan to the AR camera which added this GameObject to the scene.  We made sure that the object target was set to the Vuforia Camera so that the camera knew what object it was searching for. We then added a cube to the ObjectTarget and placed this in the plane. Below is a v...

Chris took us through Vuforia and how to use this in Unity. As I had already downloaded Unity but didn't add Vuforia when installing, I had to download the Vuforia support for Unity. We added an AR camera using the Vuforia Engine and added an ImageTarget to the camera. We deleted the other GameObjects from the scene that weren't needed for this project. In the project settings' XR settings we enabled the Vuforia Augmented Reality Support. We then pressed 'Add Target' to the ImageTarget GameObject and we were automatically sent to the Vuforia site. We logged in created a project and went to the develop section and pressed, 'Get Development Key'. This gave us a free development license key.  On the AR camera we clicked 'Open Vuforia Engine Configuration' which allowed us to insert the development key in the 'App Licence Key' section. We then added a database to the project we created earlier and added a target...