Week 5

Week 5

Cian:

This week I finished development on the first level or section of our game out of a planned 4 (?). The first level takes place in a house, so I imported the house I had built for one of the previous prototypes. It took some effort getting everything imported properly and getting rid of all the missing textures and models. I made some changes to the house too, mainly focusing on scaling it down as it felt a little larger than life at times. From there, I added the clock I had made for the Week 3 prototype and scripted the events for the level. The player must merely explore the house for a minute before the door way to the next level opens. This level merely serves to build atmosphere and get the player familiar with playing the game. I also decided to throw in a dialogue system last minute, allow the player to interact with some items in the house and receive some flavour text, giving the house level a bit more depth. The house still retains the soundtrack that my brother made along with the clock ticking which is now 3D. I was also thinking of adding outside rain ambience but I'm cautious about polluting the soundscape too much. We also decided to switch the player controls to the modern standard of keyboard and mouse controls, rather than the tank controls we had used earlier. I think this well end up being the best choice for a more immersive experience, especially when it comes to audio.

We also started on our Game Design Macro, outlining the levels that the final game will have. The game begins in the house, which will then continue onto an office building themed maze making good use of spatial audio cues to instill a sense of dread. The 2 levels after the office are still up in the air currently, though we do have some ideas we are working with at the moment, such as a corrupted version of the house made entirely out of meat.

For our vertical slice, we hope to have both the first house level, along with the office. This should provide a good demonstration of the games scope and scale. We are already well on our way to the completion of this milestone.

Matthew: This week I worked on the second section of the game, this level takes place in a maze comprised of different office building rooms. I used an asset pack (POLYGON office building | 3D Urban | Unity Asset Store) for all the assets but designed the layout myself. The goal of the second level is to create the tension of being trapped in a confusing maze while making the player think something is watching them, making use of audio. When the player finds the center room of this maze they will be transported to level 3. The hardest part of designing the maze was the decoration, making this setting feel familiar yet unsettling was something I struggled with. I've also tried testing enemy AI in this maze layout just to see how it performs.