Game Research Department Japan Branch

Exciting game development by AWS beginners & Unity beginners

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Inspiration

The first idea for the game was inspired by the commonality of how we work in the workplace, as some of the development team members are new to the workforce. In this game, the player assumes the role of a supervisor and gives necessary information (items) to subordinates (NPCs). When the work is completed, the player receives income as a reward. We believe that the method of converting elements from daily life into a game is an effective way to start the production process.

What it does

The following items were implemented in this game.

  • Tutorial: game tutorial display.
  • Main Game: the main game. The player earns money by picking up items and delivering items sought by NPCs. Positive and negative statuses change depending on the player's actions and affect the player. Play until you run out of motivity!
  • Ranking: shows the player's ranking.

How we built it

This game was built using a combination of the following technologies.

  • Unity: building the game itself.
  • AWS S3: uploading Unity build files onto S3 buckets and distributing the game
  • DynamoDB: storage of ranking data (user names + scores)
  • Lambda: storing and retrieving data between Unity and DynamoDB.
  • CloudFront: issue SSL certificates to support https communication
  • Route53: acquire domain name

Challenges we ran into

The challenges we faced were.

  • Estimating man hours This project started in late November, but despite the initial scale of the project, the quantity and division of tasks was ambiguous because the development design was omitted and man-hours were not estimated. We were reminded that design is an important phase of the project and that, compared to company web development, there are many more changes and additions to requirements, so we needed to devise ways to make changes to the design in a flexible manner. In the end, we decided to proceed as far as we could before the deadline, and the project took its current form.
  • Communication with members. There were situations where there were conflicts because it was not possible to grasp in advance the time available for the project, motivation, completion plans and what other members were thinking about. This is an issue that can also occur in practical development, but it was necessary to agree on these issues before planning the game.
  • Errors caused by WebGL compression format when running Unity on static hosting in S3 -> handled by changing the compression format.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Building a simple and highly available gaming infrastructure using Unity and S3.

What we learned

  • The importance of regular communication in multi-person development
  • The importance of pre-development design and schedule awareness among members

What's next for Game Research Department Japan Branch

In the future, we can expect to update the following points to make the game more enjoyable to play.

  • Adjustment of level design
  • Adjustment of variables related to score (money)
  • Adjustment of item generation method
  • Unified graphics
  • Add SEs and effects
  • Added reactions for each event

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