Week 3- Prototype 3
Concepting
This week of Production began similarly to week 1. We started by brainstorming and then concepting three game. The first day of the sprint, I spent that night to further developed the ideas to present to the team the next day. The first concept was called Aqueduct in which the player controls a small drop of water and must switch between the three states (ice, water, and water vapor) to navigate through the level and complete physics based puzzles. The second game idea was called Heat Lamp which had the player controlling a small lamp that was on a mission to destroy al of the toys in the room through jumping on them and flattening them and melting them with its light. The final game idea was called No More Neptune in which the player would play as a galactic tyrant’s wait-servant, keeping him happy to keep him from destroying more planets in the universe.
As a team, we were all most excited about the water drop game, but without clear art direction, solid narrative, and physics based puzzles, we decided that the game would be out of scope for this production cycle. We decided not to go with No More Neptune since it was also a management game and would end up similar to the Potion Seller game we had made during the last sprint. With those two ideas out, we chose Heat Lamp for out final prototype.
Hot Shot
We returned to Unity for this prototype to give our programmer a break after logging a lot of hours the previous week.
My contributions:
Concepting
Screen visualizations
Controller layout
UI
Enemy health
Player health
Player jump attack
Player heat lamp attack
In the end, the game had a full game loop with the player able to kill enemies and the enemies being able to kill the player. The UI was fully implemented, too. However, the game had a lot of bugs, the movement was clunky, and the game drew too heavily on Pixar for inspiration, seeming like a cheap knock of. We at least had a prototype to show off though.
Final Thoughts
This week, the team was burned out. Everyone had a lot of work for our other classes, we were tired from the work we put in for our second prototype, and we lacked proper communication and a vision for the game. It was not how we hoped to end for the final prototype, but now we get to select a game and move on in production, working to mid mortem. I look forward to seeing how the game we choose will develop.
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