Introduction to my Own Game - Winter Project

For this assignment we have been set the task of designing and creating our own up to 3 minute introduction to a game. In the game we must have triggers that set off animation, sound and events within the game and have to create the level in Unity. We must also have accompanying paperwork including a rough level sketch and a one sheet showing the initial game concept.

To start off the project I mind mapped some rough ideas of concepts for my game and narrowed down the selection to my final concept.

 I decided on the concept of using an open-world exploring game with a fantasy genre and setting of floating islands with multiple building on the islands. Once I was happy with this project I started by creating my rough level plan sketches for my game.

Within my rough level plans I decided I needed a way to get the player to the top to reach the floating islands and to do this I wanted to use a more organic look to fit in with the rest of the scenery rather than stairs or ladders so I decided on using mushrooms and creating a mushroom forest as my base ground level and then having different size mushrooms for the player to climb up and use as a staircase to reach the islands.

After I was happy with my rough level plan sketches and rough concept I then created my one sheet for my game mapping out the general objectives, genre, settings, title and the main character of the game.

After creating my one sheet I then decided to start researching into references for my game to build my models as accurately as possible, I researched into things such as mushrooms for my mushroom forest, floating islands and castles and temples both within real life and other artists concepts and existing games. To show off my research clearly I created a visual mood board.

After researching I then started to map out my level plan for the introduction in Unity according to my level sketches by using basic geometric shapes to represent some of the level such as the floating islands, but then also made some models of various mushrooms in Maya and exporting these and then imported these into Unity to show the start of my game.

My next stage in the project was the create a detailed storyboard planning out the events that will happen within my game introduction, the story and also how I will incorporate the three different types of triggers within the introduction, including sound, players input and players input and location.

After storyboarding my events I decided to change about a few things in my level, I firstly added a mountains model around the whole level to add some atmosphere and stop the player from walking off the edge so easily. I also decided to add some more mushrooms to complete the main path in smaller steps and removed a lot of the mushrooms in the forest to tone it down as I felt these took away from the attention of the main path, but they still represent the main idea of the mushroom forest with what is left. I then modelled my floating islands and vines to connect the islands and placed these into my unity project to flesh out the level a bit more and make it clearer that the scene is fantasy. My next stages will be to model the castle, the interior of the castle room, the temple and the props to go into my level and then I will add the triggers as planned out in my storyboard.

I have now gone away and worked on my own level some more and added the major final models to the game such as the castle, temple and props within these buildings that sit on the floating islands to bring the level to life and add the story line to the game. I have also added a sky box to add some atmosphere to the overall level and complete the ambient effect. I have also added sound effects to bring the level to life such as ambient music and door opening, closing, locked doors, chest opening sound effects. I have also added the code to my level to bring the level to life and make it work such as the mushrooms changing colour when you land on them, sound effects, GUI text and animations to make the doors and chest open, as well as things like turning on the candle lights within the castle when clicked. Overall I am really pleased with my final level and feel it follows my plan of my one sheet and storyboard with some added extras and the overall game play works really well together to create an interesting and fun introduction to my own game.