Inspiration
The four of us love making and playing video games, but we wish there were more video games with a positive message and an applicability to the real world. Between engaging in climate strikes at our high school and starting local fundraisers to repopulate national forests, our team is already passionate about environmentalism, so we decided to combine our common purpose with our common skill: programming!
What it does
Terra Rescue is an adorable, running platform game with one important twist: the challenge in each level is overcoming a new effect of climate change like methane gas clouds, forest fires, and marine littering. To fight climate change, collect the sprites that represent eco-friendly living, like plant-based foods, saplings, and trash that needs to be picked up. Along the way, learn about how many different ways we can each choose to fight climate change, like gathering petition signatures or changing your diet. We can all do our part!
How I built it
Our project was built in Unity with the language C#. We started by planning each level, down to the unique obstacles and design style. From there, we each tackled different parts of the project to play to our strengths while occasionally collaborating on a challenging task. Tianna created original, animated, pixel sprites and our characters, Kit and Greta. Makenzie designed and added texture to the platform levels. Myriam led character interactions and movement. Claire created the backdrops for each level and designed the opening scenes and scene changes. We used the collaboration feature on Unity to piece together our individual work to make this awesome, final project!
Challenges I ran into
3/4 of us are beginners to Unity and have to rely on finding tutorials or reading script documentation to write our game. Some of the most challenging things to program were the character's jumping, a looping background, and optimizing GIFs to Unity. We also chose to use Unity3D to create a 2D game, requiring us to critically think in order to translate every 2D tutorial online for our needs.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Tianna: Getting the background to infinitely loop! Myriam: As the only member who has repeated experience with Unity, being able to help my friends debug their code. Makenzie: Getting the repository to work and working together with my friends on the cloud. Also, tile maps. Claire: Becoming more comfortable and confident with Unity in the span of 24 hours! And finally, coming back to Rose Hack for a second year (woot woot) and seeing how much we've grown- both in ambition and ability!
What I learned
Technically: we learned more about sprites, tile maps, and 2D game development. Teamwork: we all have different styles of working, but the more often we collaborate, the more efficient we become because we learn how to highlight one another's strengths. Women in STEM: we love being in a support system of women and other underrepresented people in STEM fields because they're clearly passionate, not only about what they do, but about uplifting others as well. <3
What's next for Terra Rescue
For now, we want to make sure the gameplay is smooth and functional, since we weren't able to get all levels working. In order to really hold up to our original vision, Terra Rescue needs an infinite and randomly generating platform so that the game has better replay value. Also, making the game more captivating and complex with a boss battle or mingling with an NPC/choose-your-own-adventure style.
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