Intro - A Party to Murder

Hello!

This is the first installment of what I hope to be many devlogs over the next 3-4 months. I have begun work on my Masters Thesis Project. I am exploring the idea of replay-ability and how to procedurally create alternative endings for games based on player choices. I began work last week on 11 May 2020, and have finished my first playable prototype.

Normally, before any digital work begins, I would have mocked up a physical prototype. However, with COVID-19, it would be socially irresponsible to have in-person play test sessions. I decided to jump straight to digital for that reason.

This past week was all about creating a functional system to operate within, in order to ensure that I could add functionality down the road. I took my existing First Person controller and heavily modified it to work as an isometric controller with a camera that can be manipulated by the player. This has been an ongoing process, and as I added more functionality to the project, I had to make adjustments.

The next thing I wanted to take on was a theme. I already knew that I would be creating a story around a murder, but I had now clue as to which setting I wanted to use. I did know that the setting would be largely dependent upon what kind of assets I could find. Thus, I went shopping in the Unity Asset Store. I found the Fantasy Heroes set by Synty Studios, and immediately knew that I would be using a medieval theme. Not only did Synty have characters, they also had Kingdom and Dungeon props. These were not free assets, but I bit the bullet and purchased them.  I plan to use these assets again in the future for a couple of other games I want to make, so I consider it a long term investment.

With the theme selected, I also had to find some animations. There are a couple of free basic sets which I found in the asset store that suited my purposes. It was the first time I had imported Mechanim assets, and I enjoyed how easy they were to apply to the models from Synty. Dialing in the animations and the models took some time and experimentation, but it wasn't a terrible process.

My FPS controller was designed to work with Fungus. I planned to continue using Fungus for dialog, as I have gotten more familiar with it through repeated usage. I still found that some things did not work the way I had hoped, but for the most part, I was able to integrate Fungus with only a few minor technical difficulties.

Where I ran into the biggest trouble was attempting to incorporate both keyboard/mouse functionality AND game controller functionality. Using Input.GetAxis() was helpful, but not always feasible. Button/joystick sensitivities on XBox One controllers are different from keyboards and mice, and I spent quite a bit of time making sure both worked as intended.

Once all of this was working in the Demo level that came with the Asset package from Synty, it was time for me to make my own level. I ran into some issues with my expectations around how the assets would line up and the reality of the situation. Wall sections were not the same size as floor sections, and also not the same size as roof sections. Getting things to align correctly was not ideal, but I made it work. Where I see noticeable issues is with UVs and lighting/shadows. Because I am scaling some of the assets, it throws off the shadows in places. Not game breaking, but not what I was hoping for visually.

After about a week, I had everything working to my satisfaction, and started trying to iron out any bugs I ran across. This took a couple of days. Once I had it where I wanted it, I made the first build and again, tested it for functionality/usability/bugs. Of course, I found some things in the production build that were not present in the editor, so I spent most of today taking care of those. Now, I' m happy with where I have gotten for this first playable prototype.

I will be posting a link to the game for a Google Form to get some feedback, and I hope that you will check out my game and let me know what you think!