Mock Pitch Prep (continued)
This week is a continuation of the last in the sense that we were still preparing for the mock pitch as best we could with the time that we had. Thankfully, my last shift at work is this week and I cannot wait to get more stuck in with the project and contribute more to the team. The downside to this is that I also move house on the 13th of July, so I have this to juggle now also.
The plan for the pitch was a rather simple one after all elements were pieced together: produce as much gameplay as possible and make a screen recording of it and keep it unedited, not worrying too much on quantity but rather quality. If the pitch is not exactly 10 minutes (like it should be in the final submission) then we need not worry as we are merely wanting feedback for now. As a few members were not available to attend the pitch, Georgi took it upon himself to present, which with how manic things have been outside of this project for me, I am a little relieved. Although this should not be the case for the actual pitch.
Level Design Collaboration
Pretty much immediately from the start of collaborating properly on the hub level, James and I experienced issues with GitHub conflicts when either of us tried to commit and push changes in GitHub for the other to pull. (GitHub, 2021) This was due to the fact that we both missed Georgi’s early suggestion of containing in game assets within their own prefabs within the hierarchy. The ultimate decision behind the prefab workflow is “being able to edit an entire Prefab Asset without having to instantiate it in the scene or edit an existing instance means you can avoid mistakes related to accidentally applying overrides in the scene that shouldn't have been applied.” (Unity Technologies, 2021)
PlatformingSection1 was assigned to James and PlatformingSection2 was assigned to me.
James’ side is more stable whereas my side is broken down as if someone has sabotaged the temple so that people cannot obtain the first puzzle and progress deeper.
Forward Planning for Future Level Design
Even though James and I possessed the general premise of the player needing to unlock the first two abilities, it got us thinking about what levels we would make down the line. We were thinking of how the tree of life might continue to thrive and how the player might disrupt that. I came up with the idea that each level could embody certain necessities of a tree; mainly surrounding the roots. We suggested that in total it would be ideal to have three levels that would accompany the hub level and each time you completed a level the deeper you would go down, similar to Spelunky 2 (2020). The problem lied with how we might use these rather unexplored abilities to impact the environment, complete puzzles, and progress further through the game.
As a starting point we were going through all the different elements such as fire, wind, water, etc. and which ones we should incorporate into a later version of the prototype. Hence, the reason why ice came up. The idea of fire to be implemented came up as well, although personally, I feel that this might be too destructive and on the nose. As a writer, I do not like the idea of making things too obvious, but rather leaving breadcrumbs of hints that might be picked up by a select view, thus making the ending more impactful and producing an ‘oh my god moment’ from some of our players who are more invested in the story
Here is what we came up with:
The first level to be separate from the hub level would be a sort of ‘underground jungle’ in which the player would unlock the ice ability at some point in the level to progress to the next.
The player would use ice to freeze certain objects within the level in order to smash what were deemed unbreakable objects or to slide across water. This level would be symbolic to that of soil in the sense that it would become uninhabitable for types of vegetation and hence the tree of life if it were to be frozen and existing roots smashed for the player to reach new areas.
The second level we came up with was that of caverns which would take aesthetic influence from The Northern Crater of Final Fantasy VII (1997).
Because of how the ability behaves now in which the cloud ability makes it possible for certain objects to float and be jumped on, we were struggling to find ways in which we could incorporate this and make it affect the environment within the temple. In this level, the player would use the existing cloud ability to change water into vapour so that they can access more areas such as caves. With this the tree of life and the temple is affected more so as its main source is removed. Thankfully, everyone seems to be onboard with our suggested game mechanic change.
Presentation
Another personal issue affected my contributions yet again and so I was not able to record my side of the level for the mock pitch. Thankfully James was able to record his side. (Waters, 2021) This left me feeling extremely frustrated and very guilty that I was not pulling my weight enough because of these factors. I apologised but because no one was in the dark as to what was going on, they remained very supportive and at my lowest point, they reiterated what I had been saying previously, that all my troubles would be ending on 13th of July.
The feedback we received from the pitch is to be implemented in the final pitch, of course, if it still relevant. Overall, the response we received was positive and they were keen to get to know what the final prototype would like. I believe they were mindful that it is still early days. They suggested what we were already of and that is cemented the puzzle elements and how they correlate with the changing environment and thus the narrative. We were praised especially on our focus of accessibility; however, it was mentioned that the changing of materials merely appeared to be changing colours of surfaces and so we are encouraged to focus more on the core mechanic. We are to take all of this on board and get geared up for the final few sprints! For our final presentation, we are going to record on zoom so that all of us will appear on the screen when presenting. Even though, we were told that we are lacking what we already know we are, we are to incorporate feedback given to the other groups who pitched also.
References
2021. Unity. San Francisco: Unity Technologies
Final Fantasy VII. 1997. PlayStation [Game]. Square Soft, Inc: Tokyo
GitHub. 2021. GitHub: Where the world builds software. [online] Available at: <https://github.com/> [Accessed 19 August 2021].Miro. 2021.
Waters, J., 2021. Connect demo. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZkyOqq5RAc> [Accessed 20 August 2021].
Spelunky 2. 2020. PlayStation 4 [Game]. Mossmouth, LLC: California
Unity Technologies, 2021. Prefab Workflow - Unity | Unity. [online] Unity. Available at: https://unity.com/prefabs [Accessed 20 August 2021].