Tower of Babylon

Inspiration

I try to make this game for non-gamers. It inspires us to reconnect with the dreams and aspirations we had as children. It reminds us that no matter how far we may have drifted from those goals over time, they still hold the power to inspire and motivate us towards a more fulfilling life.

What it does

In this game, players are able to walk freely on the map, talk to different people, and make choices. Each character in the game has one thing that stop them from pursuing their goal. Enid is afraid of trying, and Renira is afraid of changing and failing. I would like to invoke players’ self-reflection by talking and solving their problems. Finally, players decide whether continue pursuing on their goals or give up.

How I built it

The game is built in Unity. I explored with Unity visual scripting combining with codes. For dialogue system, I use Ink, an third party add-on for Unity. I followed tutorials on YouTube along with the process.

Challenges I ran into

Since I use Ink for the dialogue system, everything I want to change during the dialogue has to be done in the Ink file. However, Ink only takes tags and dialogue texts, so I have to define a tag in code, and call it when the tag is triggered in the dialogue. One challenge I ran into is I wanted to make NPC1 disappear after the player talked to them and walked away until the NPC sprite is out of sight. Considering people use different size of monitor playing the game, it could be tricky to define if the NPC sprite is off the screen. So eventually, I solved this issue by setting up a condition: If the player talked to NPC2 after NPC1, when the dialogue is triggered, NPC1 disappear. I only need to make sure NPC1 and 2 are not too close that they show up on the screen at the same time. This way, I can triggered the function by using a tag from NPC2’s dialogue.

Accomplishments that I am proud of

This is the first time I create a game fully by myself. I do not have a rich coding experiences and there were not many visual scripting tutorials at that time, so I learned everything from limited tutorials and documentations. I am very appreciated help from my friend, who is a computer science and math major. Finish this game in two weeks was impossible for me, but I made it.

What I learned

I have a better understanding about coding, and Unity game production pipeline. It is also important to get feedback from peers and professors regularly.

What's next for Tower of Babylon

I am thinking about adding more 3D models for backgrounds, and make the map bigger. I also would like to add character animations for NPCs and expand the story further.