Track
General Track
Inspiration
Our game began as a bunch of ideas thrown at a piece of paper until a few things managed to stick. We looked at the different tracks, explored how we might be able to involve social impact, and at some point along the way, the idea of a horror game based loosely on the Darley towers wherein you have to fight your own demons to escape came about. For the most part, the idea developed over time as the project went on. We went from multiple levels to just one as a proof of concept, we chose to move away from the social impact track for the sake of focusing on learning new skills, and overall we sought to improve the project and add new pieces to it as we found the time to do so.
What it does
IGS - Darley is a game in which you control a player in a map we created. You can choose to dodge or fight goblins, interact with minigames, and do your best to escape. The best way to understand it is to play and have fun.
How we built it
We used Unity game engine to create the game and handle scenes, input, and all of the code. The graphics for the game were created using Procreate.
Challenges we ran into
For all but one member of our group, this was our first time using Unity. Around half of the first day was spent setting up Unity and learning or relearning how to actually use the tool or trying to find enough space on our laptops to actually run the software. Figuring out how to create scenes, connect the minigames, include animations that change depending on how a character is actually moving, include gravity physics, add bounding boxes on the map, use the game manager, and even add AI for the goblins were all done on the spot with a lot of testing, patience, and teamwork. On top of this, trying to both time manage and avoid stepping on one another's proverbial toes within shared code, as Unity and Github can get into a lot of disagreements when two or more people are working within the same scene. After learning this the hard way, we had to carefully manage who was doing what task throughout the project to keep our code from conflicting with what one another was doing.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
In 24 hours, we learned how to use Unity, created a game that's functional and includes features we did not know how to include at the start of this event, and we did our best to make it look as polished as possible by also including all of our own graphics and textures. Our game took a lot of combined effort, and the fact that we even have any sort of finished project would have come as a complete shock to the version of us yesterday that were struggling just to use Unity.
What we learned
Pretty much every part of the project was a learning experience. From learning how to create pixel art in an art editor that is not designed for it, include these graphics, include any sort of game mechanics, code using C# scripts, and ultimately every feature of the game, we learned how to do these things as we worked. At a certain point once we started working on this project, we decided that our ultimate goal was to learn something new. This was at about the same time we decide our project would be within the General track. As a whole, we accomplished this goal, and we have a game to show for it.
What's next for IGS - Darley Game
Our original plan for the game was to have multiple levels with an ongoing storyline. Considering we were learning how to use the tools for the first time, we had to scale this back quite a bit. However, we designed the game to be modular. Once the first level was added, it would be far easier to add levels afterwards, with only minor changes, such as a feature for searching dorm rooms to find the one that is unlocked on each floor and a coherent plot line that involves the minigames. In its current state, our game is a proof of concept with basic features. However, expanding this to be a much more fleshed out game built on our current framework is incredibly possible... if given enough time.
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