Seaside Scrubbers
Week 1
This week we were all introduced to our teams, this module requires us to also collaborate with Animation Students as well as other Game Design Students to create a project over the course of 12 weeks in total.
My group consisted of myself, Logan Mawhinney, Jack Wilson, Cathal Meehan as the game design students and Joyce Guo, Victoria Howells and Kaitlin Woods are our animation students who will be contributing to our project.
After we had acquainted ourselves with our other group members, we were then presented with our theme for the project, the theme of this project is ‘Unstable’.
Game Pitches
We then started brainstorming ideas for our game, to do this we used a voting method where each team member had to come up with 5-10 game ideas and pitch them to the group, when we had finished we as a group we would then vote which one we liked the best out of them.
Our Final 3 were 'Dragon Fight', 'Airplane Crash' and 'Malfunctioning Robot Escape'.
After the presentation we were informed by our tutors and peers that they didn’t like any of the games we had pitched. So we decided to reevaluate our theme and return with a better game for us to pitch, that was when we all as a group decided to work together to create our game idea. We went with a 2.5D game that we named ‘Seaside Scrubbers’.
Week 2
This week we made Seaside Scrubbers the official name and theme for our group project. This was also when we all decided our roles within the team in terms of the Game design students, Logan and Cathal are the scripters for our project, I will be the UI designer and scripter, and Jack will be the level designer, and in terms of the animation students, Joyce will be the main character animator, Kaitlin will be the NPC creator and help out with other assets and Victoria (Tori) is the prop designer.
After determining our roles this was when we decided to create a Miro board to brainstorm for our ideas of what we wanted to implement as well as create an idea for the genre and design for the game. The first thing I decided to do was decide what features we would need to have on the HUD, after taking all those into concentration I decided to get images of references to convey the theme and design I wanted to create as well as allow my team mates to have their input and opinions of everything.
After getting these inspirational references I chose to create some scamps for possible HUD screens I wanted to create and then I moved on to making wire frames based of the scamps I had drawn.
After receiving good feedback from my team I chose to using the concepts from the Miro board to design the coins that we will be using in game, I also sent these to my team and they all agreed on the colours and the design.
Week 3
This week I choose to work on implementing the colour scheme into the HUD after we as a group chose which HUD wire frame we all thought worked best.
I chose to also use the prototype feature within Figma to convey how the progress bar would look in game. After receiving feedback from both the presentation and after sending this design to my group they informed me that they actually liked the level bar progress bar more than the jar progress bar. After this we choose to use a different wire frame as the reference and this one was approved by both are tutors and my team mates.
Another achievement I had made this week was I learned how to properly operate the GitHub and I created the coin collect mechanic so now in the game the coin count now is linked to HUD and keeps track of the coins you collect. I also added the HUD onto the players screen.
I added the HUD to the screen I, I took the assets from Figma and added them into Unreal Engine 5.
This week I also started to design a pause screen for the game. I chose to research similar game types to take inspiration for the type of pause screen to use for our game. After doing this I chose to create wire frames based off of the scamps I had created and then sent them to the rest of my team for feedback.
This week I have noticed that there is not very much communication from members of the group, we have noticed that some things we want to include haven't been conveyed properly to the point where they should have been leaving members of the group confused and unable to meet work requirements due to lack of understanding.
Week 4
This week out of the wire frames I had designed, I created the design for the pause menu, I also added it into our Unreal Engine 5 project. I also made some hover states for the buttons and implemented them into the project as well.
After seeing the player character and the items for the inventory I decided that the inventory HUD didn't entirely match the theme as everything else was hand drawn but the HUD was done digitally so I decided that adding a stroke to the assets might make it fit better with the theme. I also used the Figma prototypes to show the states of the level progress bar, unfortunately I was unable to properly implement it this week as I am waiting for the level to be made.
Week 5
This week we had a few issues with the GitHub, myself and Logan had lost some work that we both had to redo so this week wasn't very productive but I did manage to get some wire frames done for other UI Widgets such as the Inventory screen.
Week 6
This week we had a presentation where myself and my group presented what we had of our game so far. This is where I was given the advice to make the UI match a bit more with the player character so that is what I spent this week doing as well as making a new colour palette for them.
Week 7
This week I remade the home screen to fit a bit more with the theme of the game and making things more consistent, I personally think this works way better with our style of game. I also made hover states for the inventory slots to show the player which item is selected. And I also decided to change the inventory on the HUD to make it look better with the player character.
Week 8
This week I decided to work on the inventory, this was actually really difficult and I did really struggle with it but I did eventually get it working. Turns out I started out way too complicated but when I simplified it down I got it to work.
This week was a bad week for our team, as 2 members of our team left the course leaving myself and Logan to pick up the extra work on the games side of things.
Week 9
This week I took it upon myself to attempt to make an opening level for our game to double as a tutorial level for the project. When I was creating this level I was told that the environment didn't fit with the style of the game.
Week 10
This week I decided to focus more on the UI as I needed more UI screens done, I completed the 'You Died' screen after the player falls into the stomach acid. I also made the tutorial screen that welcomes the player to the game.
As well as the you died screen and the tutorial I created the wire frame, low-fidelity and high-fidelity designs for the 'You Win' screen, and I also added them to the project as well as making a trigger box to make the widget appear when the player completes the level.
Week 11
This week I was determined to get all of the UI for the game designed so that next week I can script it all and have it all ready in the project to make sure that it will be completed by our deadline period. I made the UI for the poker task, the shop / jet pack widget, the how to use jet pack widget, the 'You win' widget, the 'Level Select' widget, both the 'Controls' screens for both PC and Console, the 'Main Menu' widget and the 'wrong combination' screen. This week was entirely focused on design as well as some scripting.
After I was finished with design, I decided to continue with the scripting I scripted the Poker task first as I knew that Logan would be needing that for showing off our game to our lectures and peers.
Week 12
This week is the last week of us creating our launch title progress, as a few final touches, I scripted all of the UI. By the end of our final week. I had all of the UI done, imported into Unreal Engine 5 and scripted in game.