Tiffany Derbyshire's Work

Tiffany Derbyshire

Week 1:

After picking groups, we were then assigned to create a 2D game. Firstly altogether we came up with an idea which was to create a hidden object mystery solving game, we then created a One Sheet which allowed us to narrow down each aspect of our game, including the art style, narrative, mechanics and goals. Afterwards, we discussed our greatest strengths and weaknesses and assigned one another to certain tasks we felt more comfortable with, whilst still following the brief and have each of us produce at least one piece of coding and an art asset.

I was tasked to design the mansion, as environment which was to be used in our game. I was also the main coder of our group, this meant i would do the majority of the coding.
After designing an initial of the mansion, my group and I were to prepare for our presentation and so with the help of my group members we made a short video displaying a paper version of our game and showing how it was to be played as well as what mechanics, art work and UI was to be included.

Week 2:

I made a Game Design Document to briefly describe the game and all features that would be included. I also created an Art Bible displaying a mixture of our groups work and explaining what and why each of these decisions were made relating to the way our game looks and works.

I also developed my Initial Idea of the mansion and added colours and played around with effects.

Week 3:

I finalised the development version of the mansion by adding in realistic images which i then manipulated and coloured over, making it my own, this is often known as the term Photo-bashing. I also played around with different brushes and the opacity to add shadows and give plain colours texture to make the environment seem realistic.

Week 4:

With my group, we created a design document which briefly explains the game overall, including target audience, technical features and the story, this gives an overview of what the game is about. Along with this, we put together all our art assets and made an Art Bible. This would tell us about the art work and the reasons behind why we chose certain art styles, colours and ideas.

Week 5 - Week 7:

This week I put all the art assets into Unity and created multiple scenes for different parts of the game, this included the main menu, area map, and the two environments the player would be able to interact with. I assisted Danielle when it came to coding the main menu, so that when the player clicked new game, it would continue onto the next scene which was the area map. I then tested Danielle's code to ensure all buttons linked and had worked, it was then my task to code the area map and link the buttons to the narrative scene. Catherine was in charge with the narrative scene and so i created the codes so that the narrative links to the mansion.

Week 8 - Week 9:

Once the scenes were linked, I went to the first environment scene, the mansion and started to import art assets for the inventory. I found it to be considerably difficult and it took some time before it started to work, as i encountered a few problems whilst trying to code the inventory which consumed more of my time, this included several scripts within an object going missing, as well as the inventory slots. For the inventory to work, i made several scripts, such as the inventory, slots and a player script which i could link to the inventory script so that the player would be able to interact with inventory. I managed to overcome these problems by proof reading my scripts and placing the inventory in the canvas and the slot and aligning them. I then made the slot into a prefab and deleted it from the canvas. When testing, the slot would automatically align itself with the inventory background and with the values I added to the code, I could change the amount of slots I wanted in the inventory.

Week 10:

This week, Tabitha and I worked on the coding for the items, so that when the player presses the object then it would delete itself and spawn another of the same item into the inventory system that I had previously made the week before. We had to ensure that all items were linked to the inventory and we gave them separate item names so that these could all be identified as individual items by the inventory.

Week 11 - Week 12:

I then went onto creating a pause menu for the game, this included creating an empty object and then creating a canvas and an image, for the image, I made it the same size as the canvas and added a slightly opaque black colour, the reason for this was because when the game was paused the opaque black colour would fill the screen and appear duller than it should be, this is to indicate to the player that the screen is paused. Once this was done, I created another image and added the pause menu which asks the player if they would like to quit the game, as well as two buttons that said yes and no. I coded it so that when the player presses 'esc' the pause menu would pop up, this is the button on the keyboard that is majorly used when exiting or pausing games. When the pause menu popped up I had to code a timescale so that when the game is paused the game would stop and the player would not be able to click elsewhere or activate anything within the scene unless they press the yes or no button. To test when the esc button was pressed that the game would pause, I coded a debug log so that when testing, in the console section it would say that it was paused, indicating that the code worked. In order for the buttons to work, just like the main menu, I had to link the buttons to either resume the game or to navigate back to the main menu. I then duplicated this code as well as art work and applied this into the next level of the game.

Week 13 - Week 14:

The final weeks for me, I wanted to ensure that the score system and the inventory data would transfer to the next level instead of restarting itself, as well as doing the same for the score, as we would not want this to restart but instead continue to the next level as the score counts how many objects the player has found.

Overall I found working in a group was extremely difficult, sometimes we were not organised and it slowed the whole process of the game being made. As our group had 5 people and was relatively large, I found that meeting up and getting all the work done was troublesome, however we managed to ensure that all work was done for the deadline.