Eterna Hunt Beta

Eterna Hunt Beta

I have been working towards making a complete beta for my game "Eterna Hunt" over the course of this module, with some success but lots of difficulty.

Here are some screenshots from my current beta.

Screenshot of Eterna Hunt

Source: My Unity Project

Screenshot of Eterna Hunt

Source: My Unity Project

Screenshot of Eterna Hunt

Source: My Unity Project

I updated and tweaked my map a little bit and added trees and grass and path textures to make the map feel less boring and more fleshed out. I updated my UI and added a timer element to the game, though with little success. I spent quite a lot of time looking at tutorials and sample code and none of it worked for me. Speaking of script, I also spent hours trying to fix my health script. I managed to fix the code so now the player health goes up when they collect hearts, but for some reason the hearts in the UI don't update.

The spider enemies function perfectly well and look, move towards the player and attack the player however the damage script is not working. Again- I tried to figure this out for quite a while but to no avail.

I made multiple enemies and collectables and scattered them throughout the map- so the game would be perfect as of right now if the code was working.

I'm aware that a beta is supposed to have bugs ironed out but with my laptop being so slow and my lack of knowledge of scripts I did what I could towards building a beta.

I am meeting my targets by working on my project every week and implementing new features and updating the map and existing features towards creating a playable finished game. I am using my existing knowledge from tutorials and readings in order to create my game.

Overall I am pleased with my progress despite the setbacks and complications- as I am a complete beginner to Unity and game development I'm surprised I've made it so far. I hope that one day I figure out how to code so that my game can be fully functional and live up to my original vision.

Alpha

The Beginnings of an Alpha

This week, I continued to work on developing my game Eterna Hunt by adding more core mechanics into the game in order to develop an Alpha version.

I wouldn't call this a fully complete alpha as my terrain is lacking and I only have the basics set in place as of now, but it does show the basic elements of the game.

I will not be adding more to the terrain until all of my scripting is complete for now as it slows down my laptop considerably and would rather have the game elements work than have a pretty game that doesn't function.

This week I did quite a lot of scripting! 

I included a little spider enemy that looks at the player as they walk around the map, and walks towards the player and attacks when they get into a certain distance of the spider. When the player swings the axe at the spider it dies! When the spider attacks the player, it takes away some a heart from the health bar... or it should. I can't seem to get this feature to work at the moment but the scripting is there so it's only a matter of figuring out what went wrong.

Image of the spider enemy coming towards the player

Source: My Unity Project

I also added a health bar, along with hearts that can be collected from the map which increase the health by 1. This gives players a chance to recover health after an attack from the spider! The hearts are greyed out when the player loses them from damage, and when the player collects the heart it turns back to red. The hearts by default rotate, and when the player walks over them they make a sound and disappear.

Image of collectable heart

Source: My Unity

I also made a Game Over screen that activates when the player health reaches 0. As there is a bug with the code to get the health to reach 0, I can't actually test this feature at the moment until the code issue is resolved. The script to trigger the Game Over screen is there however, so in theory it should work once the spider is actually able to damage the player.

Game Over screen

Source: My Unity Project

Overall I'm happy with my development of my game so far and have been finding it easy to follow tutorials and use assets. However, my script seems to want to have a hiccup here and there, which has been difficult to try and resolve since I don't really know what I'm doing.

I am meeting my targets- I planned last week to add enemies and a health bar for this week which I did! I have a game with a main menu, collectable objects, health bar, enemies, weapons and a game over screen so I would consider it playable and in the stages of being an alpha.

Next up I'm going to look at implementing a hunger bar, fixing up my code errors, finding assets to use for my game and working on making several enemies and hearts and objects placed throughout the map.

First Playable - The Struggles of Unity

First Playable

For this week's project development, our task was to create a playable version of our games with some of the core features included. 

I struggled a lot this week with my Unity- it's like it was trying to fight me! Even though I made my map 50% smaller and removed the trees, to say it was framey and unresponsive is an understatement. When playtesting my game, it took a few seconds for it to respond to and clicking or moving. Because of this I didn't get to implement as much as I would have liked to this week, but still made some progress despite the struggles.

 

Eterna Hunt main menu screen

Source: My Unity project 

In my Unity free tutorials this week I created a main menu for my game, which drops the player into the world when the "Play" button is clicked. I still need to implement the options button features which I will do in the near future. This took me a little while to implement and to get working but I'm really happy with how it looks and works!

 

View of axe and gem

Source: My Unity project 

I added in a first person player camera, and decided to give the player an axe when starting the game. The axe includes C# code which allows it to swing and make a sound when the player left clicks, and it follows the player as they move. This is an important step for this playable as weapons play a big part in the survival aspect of my game.

I also added a collectable object to the game that makes a sound and disappears when the player walks over the object. The gem is just a placeholder for now until I find suitable assets to use in its place. I want to refine this more and add text to the object when hovered over, but my laptop was struggling so much that I had to leave it for now.

I used my knowledge from the Jimmy Vegas tutorials to implement these (I also had a look back as a refresher) as I find his tutorials are very easy to follow and he's also using the same version of Unity as me so it doesn't complicate things.

 

First person view 

Source: My Unity Project 

First person view of my game- I have to play around with adjusting the axe postion as I think it currently takes over the screen a little bit. I'm aware that the terrain is very barren at the minute, this is to preserve my laptop and be able to implement mechanics and features without as much lag a beefy terrain would bring.

While I do feel like I'm making decent progress I'm frustrated that I'm not really able to do more due to Unity being so slow. I have to try to find ways to combat this- perhaps I'll have to work from the college Macs instead of my laptop to get further into my development.

I'm most likely gonna have to cut out a ton of features I had originally planned to include for a more realistic project with the time I have to develop it, which is sad, but I'd rather have a functional game than one that's half broken. 

Next I'm going to hopefully implement some enemies and a health bar!

.

Prototype

Eterna Hunt Prototype

This week, using the GDD I have designed, I have began to develop my game using the Unity engine.

I decided to start by laying out the basic terrain of the map since it's an open world game, and getting the general layout and placements right will help me develop the game more efficiently.

I started by sketching out the general map of my game- I did this using a mobile drawing app called IbisPaint X. Bordering the entire map are mountains so that the player has a set map to explore.

There are three main sections- The forest, the volcanic region and the tundra region, along with a lake subsection. All areas are coloured for visual representation of how big the areas will be.

Map design of "Eterna Hunt"

Source: Me

Screenshots of  my developing game
Source: My Unity project


I'm finding it easy to apply textures, grass, trees and building basic terrain! My main focus was building up some terrain this time around, so I have yet to add any scripting to my game, but that will come when adding objects and creatures to my game. I'm finding scripting a little difficult; I don't really understand it and it tends to not work all too well for me, but I will combat this by looking at plenty of tutorials and sample code!

Though I have textures, grass and trees down, they're too natural looking for my liking and I would like more fantasy-esque plants and colours in my game. There are some things available in the assets store but I'm not willing to spend money on anything since it's very unlikely I'll use them outside of assignment work, so I'll have to look into free options.

I find that when I add more trees, grass and terrain to my map, it slows down my laptop considerably... it's painful to work on it when it's that slow, and there's unfortunately not much I can do to fix this slowness. This is already a big issue in this early stage, so it will probably only worsen as development continues.

I may possibly have to make the map considerably smaller than I would have liked, and be sparing with my many trees to go in the terrain in order to make my laptop a bit faster and responsive when developing. The map I have currently is bigger than I actually thought, so cutting it down shouldn't have a huge impact. Plus, this gives me chance to build and detail the terrain more since the map would be smaller.

I feel that I am meeting my targets relatively well as I have been following the majority of the Jimmy Vegas tutorials and they have taught me the basics of Unity and provide helpful tutorials on things I can add to my game. Also, having done all the project work is very helpful as it's given me a solid idea of what I want my game to look like and the things I need to do to achieve that.

Next up, I'm going to work on making my map smaller, start adding interactive objects into my game, and start working on a cursor and UI.

Game Design Document

Game Design Document

For this week's project assignment, we had to create a Game Design Document for our proposed game idea using the site Dundoc.com. 

At first I found it very confusing on how to get started, and I kept filling out the wrong things in my GDD (I kept on making new elements instead of adding to existing ones.. whoops!) but after a few minutes I figured out my error and was able to fill out my GDD.

I found that the templates provided on the site were very helpful and kept me on track when discussing the design of my game. Though a lot of it I couldn't fill in, because I did not understand it or it was way too advanced for my current stage of development.

Doing my Game Vision Statement last week actually helped me out a ton while doing this! I felt that I went into a lot of detail last week, but it ended up being very beneficial as I was able to use a lot of my vision statement in my GDD.

I'm looking forward to developing my GDD more as I develop my project in the coming weeks!

You can read my Game Design Document here!

Image of game design development

Source: Flickr

Game Vision Statement

Game Vision Statement

Fantasy forest image

Source: Needpix.com

Introduction:

“Eterna Hunt” (placeholder title) is a first person survival game in which the player is thrown into a fantasy world and must build a shelter, gather resources and defend themselves and survive for seven in game days. “Eterna Hunt” is an open world game, that will feature a number of different environments and mechanics. It will be a PC game built using the Unity 2017 engine. This game is intended for an audience of 12+ due to minor violence.

Description:

You wake up from a deep slumber and find yourself at the edge of a dense unnaturally coloured fairy forest with giant trees and plants with absolutely nothing in your inventory besides an empty journal and a stick of charcoal. You can see a looming volcano and a tundra in the distance. Your stomach rumbles- you’re peckish. All the surroundings are very foreign and unfamiliar to you. You don’t know how long you’ll be here for.. the sun is rising in the sky, daylight is burning. You must construct a shelter to shield yourself from the elements and surrounding creatures. The creatures you can see now are docile, which would make good hunting targets. Perhaps you could tame one of these creatures to have as a companion and help protect you. Though, you don’t know any of these plants or animals, so you will have to be careful with what you eat so you don’t poison. You can keep record of edible flora and fauna in your journal.

Night will soon fall, and you can hear growling the howling in the distance. The peaceful creatures run for shelter.. and from the incoming hostile mobs. Prepare your weapons if you haven’t set up your shelter yet- and fight for your life. The creatures of the night are unforgiving. If you manage to strike some down, you can use their carcasses to gather meat and parts to make stronger weapons. Be careful though- it gets extremely cold at night, so you’ll want to make a fur coat or stick by a fire to avoid taking frost damage. The volcanic area is unbearably hot, but some gemstones that can be found throughout the map have a cooling effect.

Civilization will find you in seven days time, deeming you safe. Can you survive until then?

Key Features

•  First person open world survival
•  Fantasy elements     
• Temperature, day/night cycle, hunger and poison mechanics to make gameplay challenging     
• Tamable fauna that protects the player (not set and stone).    
• Gameplay is timed- 7 in game days.

Game Genre

“Eterna Hunt” is a first person open world survival game based in a fantasy setting. The player must survive for 7 in game days in order to win the game.

Intended Audience

“Eterna Hunt” is intended for an audience of 12+ due to minor violence and the difficulty of the game. The gameplay of this game is intended to be challenging with the use of mechanics and would be very difficult for younger players.

Gameplay

“Eterna Hunt” is a first person open world survival game that runs over the course of 7 in game days in which the player must survive to complete the game. The player must construct a shelter to shield from the elements and the hostile mobs during the night. The player will grow hungry over the course of the day so they must gather plants and hunt to sustain their hunger. When hunger reaches 0, the game ends. When the health bar reaches 0, the game also ends. The player takes damage when exposed to the elements with no proper equipment, when poisoned and when attacked. These can be combated by consuming an antidote, constructing protective clothing and staying near fire. The player can also tame certain fauna that will be their companion and fight for the player.

Resources required

•        Unity 2017 assets for models of the flora and fauna of the game would be required, along with a multitude of textures to use in the terrain and for the flora and fauna. Models can also be created manually if there are no existing assets that would suit the game, though tutorials would be needed to execute this.

•        Script for required mechanics such as the health bar, the hunger bar, the temperature mechanic, the poison mechanic and the tamable fauna mechanic. There are many existing tutorials for scripting mechanics that could be used to execute the desired mechanics- such as this tutorial on how to implement a health bar such as this one.

            This page contains numerous weather related scripts including cold damage.

Final Fantasy XV Gameplay screenshot (PS4)

Source: Flickr

Game Idea Research

Game Idea Research

For my last project blog I brainstormed some game ideas for my final game- an adventure game, a cooking game, a survival game and a jailbreak game. After heavy debating I have decided to further explore the survival game idea.

Initially I was going to do a classic deserted island survival game, but I have decided to spice things up a little bit by turning it into a fantasy based open world  survival game. The game would be in a fantasy setting full of unfamiliar, almost alien like plants and animals and surroundings. The surrounding area would be open and diverse to give the player opportunities to explore and decide where to set up camp; a dense forest, a mystical lake to fish and get water, a volcano area to gather things like stone and gemstones to make tools and weaponry.

A game I was inspired by and enjoy playing a lot that is of the survival genre is Don't Starve!

Dont Starve promotional image 

Source: Flickr

I was thinking of adding some hostile mobs to the game to add some challenge- but also allows the player to hunt and gather meat to cook. They would be further out in the land and not around the starting point so the player has time to prepare. A fun idea would be to have some tame able mobs to become pets that could fight for the player!

The fantasy element and unfamiliar flora and fauna could rise to add a hunger and poison mechanic- the player would have to cook things appropriately and keep in mind anything that could be potentially poisonous when eating food. Antidotes could be made using some flora to combat any poisoning.

Here are some game mechanics I feel could work for my game concept!

• Hunger and Poisoning mechanic- since my game is a survival game, there has to be survival elements and risk to add challenge and realism to the game. A mechanic where the player grows hungry over the course of the game would be beneficial. For example, when the player is at a certain hunger level they cant regen health, and their movement slows, and their attacks grow weaker. When hunger reaches 0, it triggers a game over since the player starves. Poison would occur when the player doesn’t cook meats or certain plants; this would cause the player to gradually take damage over a period of time until it wears off or an antidote is taken. The game Minecraft actually has a mechanic a lot like this, and it goes into detail about it here!

• A health system- Both player and mobs would have a certain amount of HP in their health pool which can lessen when attacked, when poisoned, or heat/cold damage is taken. Mobs die and drop meat when their health reaches 0, but when the players health reaches 0 it triggers a game over.

• A temperature mechanic- To add realism to the game, I think a temperature mechanic could work. One of my planned areas for the game is a volcano, which would be hot, especially near the lava. The player would take damage if they stepped in the lava. The same goes for the cold, if a player for example gets in icy water they will take damage. Making pieces of armor that are heat and cold resistant could be a fun idea. One of my favourite games, The Legend of Zelda Breath of The Wild has a temperature mechanic, which you can read more about at this link!

Game Brainstorm

Game Brainstorm

For potential ideas for my final game, I took to pen and paper to write down some ideas. While I was brainstorming I was thinking back on the Unity tutorial I completed and what type of things I could achieve in my game using what I learnt- and what I will learn in the future!

I came up with several ideas ranging from different genres- some that are more story based and some based more on the gameplay and collecting items. I tried exploring different concepts regarding the terrain and map- some ideas that take place outdoors and some that are based more in the indoors. 

Here are some images of the brainstorming I did!

Game ideas brainstorm

Source: Myself

First idea: Cooking Game

My first idea for a game was to be based in a restaurant! The player would play the role of a chef in the kitchen- whipping up some dishes for the customers eating there. The player would have to run around the kitchen collecting different ingredients in order to make a variety of dishes, which they would then have to deliver to the customers. To add variety to the surroundings I would like to add different sections to the kitchen such as a storeroom/pantry, different stations dedicated to things like vegetables, meat, desserts etc. 

The end goal of this game would be to complete the service by serving all the customers. If possible, there could be a timer to complete the tasks to add more difficulty to the game. 

I was partly inspired by Gordon Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen for this game since I'm quite obsessed with all of his shows.

I'd like to learn how to randomise dishes and ingredients that appear in the game to add more to the replayability and difficulty to the game.

I haven't played many cooking games myself, but the game series Overcooked seems to have a similar idea. I haven't really seen much content for this game- but exploring it and watching some gameplay may inspire me and help me to create this cooking game if I decide to go for it for my final idea. You can read more about Overcooked here.

Overcooked 2 artwork

Source: Flickr

Second Idea: Adventure Game

My idea for this game would be for the player to be in an unknown location with no recollection of the past- so more story based. I was thinking of making the terrain a bit more sinister like a spooky forest to play into the amnesia factor. The player would have to collect items to trigger memories of the past, and the goal would be to find out the memories of the character and to escape the forest. This game would be more heavily based on story- and also use outdoor terrain. 

I was inspired by the Slenderman game for this- where you run around in a forest collecting notes.. except without the horror element. You can read more about the Slenderman game I was inspired by here. 

In terms of terrain I could make several structures within the forest and make different areas in the forest to add variety and more story elements. I could make some cabins and abandoned buildings for example. The items collected wouldn't be notes- they would be a variety of different objects to make it more interesting. 

I'd like to learn how to make more advances structures such as cabins and buildings for this game.

Slender Logo

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Third Idea: Jailbreak Game

My third idea of a game would be a jailbreak game! The objective, much like the title, would be to escape the jail. To achieve this, the player would have to collect various items to craft different tools in order to escape the prison. The prison would have various different parts, such as a cafeteria and courtyard. These locations would give the player several different items to collect such as rocks and spoons to craft things. I was also thinking that if possible, I could implement a feature where if a guard spots you with any contraband it would trigger a game over. I also am thinking of different ways for the player to escape, such as cutting fences and digging their way out, which would make the game more re-playable.

I'd like to learn about triggering a game over by having certain items in the player inventory when crossing a certain point in this game.

There is a 2D game series called The Escapists (you can read more about it here) which you are playing the life of a prisoner trying to escape. It's similar to my idea but I plan to change things around so it isn't the same if I do decide to use this as my final idea.

The Escapists artwork

Source: Flickr

Fourth Idea: Survival Game

My fourth idea would be to make a survival based game where the player is stranded on a deserted island and the goal of the game is to survive for a night. The player would have to collect resources gathered around the island- such as firewood from the jungle and rocks to make weapons in order to get food. The main objectives would be to build a base with a shelter, a fire pit, and to set up a food and water source. There would also be optional tasks- more cosmetic ones to decorate the base such as flags and trinkets.

Perhaps I could include a timer element here- if the player doesn't complete their base in a certain amount of time, night comes and they don't survive, leading to a game over. Perhaps a day and night cycle would be useful here- something I would have to look into and explore.

I drew some inspiration from the survival game Don't Starve; I enjoy this game a lot and I love building my own base using all the tools in the game. The game is combines both 2D and 3D elements and has lots more story and survival elements- looking further into the game (and playing it more myself!) will give me ideas and inspiration for other potential mechanics to include in my own game. You can read more about Don't Starve here!

Don't Starve promotional art

Source: Flickr