Inspiration
Our love for music. The fact that music theory often seems daunting to some despite how rewarding it is to learn and the fact that it's actually intuitive if broken down to be more accessible.
What it does
Explore different levels in our top-down 2D game and learn about music --the language that connects us all. In the brief development period that we had, we were able to add in a drumset that has different sounds for each drum and can calculate BPM. We also added a piano keyboard that allows players to experiment with five different chords.
How we built it
Unity for game design and main engine, C# for game scripting, Github for project collaboration, Gimp for 2D art, Pixlr for 2D art and 2D sprite animation.
Challenges we ran into
We ran into some issues with Github at the beginning. We are all new to working with Github, so we were slightly unsure of how to properly collaborate on a Unity project. We ended up trying to work on the same scene and then merging that progress, which led to some conflict issues and general hardship. We, fortunately, got around that by compartmentalizing our project such that each member can work on a separate scene. Due to some of these issues, we actually ended up making 3 repositories in an effort to properly set up Github!
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We like how the main character came together and how his movement animations work dynamically. We're proud of how our art style is reflected throughout the project and we were able to keep consistent scenes. We're also very proud of how we took a gamble on working with Unity C# scripts as total beginners but were able to make our ideas of music theory interactivity a reality.
What we learned
We learned how to work with unity, how to structure a large collaborative project online, and how to effectively work collaboratively with Github. Our scripting team members also learned how to work with C# scripts in Unity and how to use various different functions and coding scripts. Our 2D artists learned how to use new software, including Gimp and Pixlr, and how to work with typical 2D assets such as Sprite animations and Tilemaps. Our game designer learned how to work with Unity UI and greatly honed his skills in general Unity usage.
What's next for Ocean Beats
We'd love to expand on our drum so it can have some functionality with polyrhythm. This could be done through a script that detects two different BPMs and calculates how many times each drum is being played per measure. For the piano, we also wanted to add a png overlay to the keyboard itself that highlights the keys that one would play to play each chord. We also want to add in more instruments. For example, a guitar that can play different strings and possibly demonstrate where to place your fingers to play different chords. These new instruments would let us create even more scenes. Perhaps you would go from the beach to the city, and into the woods!
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.