Slime Dispatch

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  Editor View of the Game (1)

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  Editor View of the Game (2)

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  Game View

Inspiration

Going into a Masters in Computer Graphics, what better challenge the Game Development? This summer I have spent my Covid-homebound time reading up on blender, unity, Maya, Unreal Engine.... This is a perfect way for me apply these newly acquired skills toward a cohesive project.

When building a game, there are three criteria to consider: Narrative, Mechanics, Graphics. Given a 96 hour deadline, I choose to focus on one criteria instead of spreading myself too thin on all three. I choose to make a game that has advanced graphics.

What it does

In this little game you control an katana-wielding avatar from another dimension. To save his world he must kill a cute little ball of slime... Will he be able to go through with this or will he succumb to its cuteness?

How I built it

First of all, I hand-created such the island and the slime (inc. all its animations). I then went to Mixamo, Unity Asset Store, and TurboSquid to get additional pre-existing assets. I then created and imported pre-existing special effects to enhance the world these assets where going to populate.

Next, I wanted grass. So using a combination of C# and HLSL I created a grass mesh generator and shader to make it responsive to wind and trampling.

Link to video on GGDrive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oFGaj7Vfi6swq9jlbZ_kIv13z_3_Y6dG?usp=sharing

But what is a game without even the simplest Gameplay? By stitching together hand-written script and unity-engine features I created a simple movement and combat system.

Challenges I ran into

My editor broke randomly in the middle of day 2 so I had to re-download an alternative editor. Additionally, I had a hard time finding assets that where geometrically simple enough to be handled by the engine but still looked good. And finally, there is every programmer's all-time favorite: debugging....

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Two things: The Slime. Despite being simple, the slime moves in an organic manner and looks quite good. I am very proud of how I modeled, rigged, and animated it. Furthermore, from a coding perspective, I am very proud of my grass. Being the first time I actually used HLSL to do GPU programming, and considering that I didn't follow any tutorials (as everything I found related to Geometry shader instead of Compute shaders).

What I learned

Game Development requires a true blend of the arts industry and the CS industry. I found myself many times wishing I had an in-house artist who could design assets for me to fit the envisioned 'genre' of my game; instead I settled for 'satisfactory' online assets

What's next for Kill The Slime

I will definitely be working not this game after the end of DurJam! I want to implement an ability system to make game play more interesting with various abilities.

Built With

• c#
• hlsl
• unity