Trial Shift (#2) | 'Early' Prototyping

2 months have passed and there has been a nasty rumour circulating, insinuating that I am severely behind schedule. THIS. IS. A. LIE.

Yes, the haters may say that my project has not progressed significantly. Yes, there was also a month of radio silence. So what? Are we going to crucify every man for seeking brief respite from the unending hum-drum of work?

To that I say: Shame on you! 🫵

What Happened?

Getting back on track, I can confirm that said rumours have some grounding in reality. Naturally, the next question you may ask is: 'What were you doing during these two months?'

Across these past two months, I:

• Finished my other work for the semester (design doc, face mocap and this website)

• Practised lighting with darker environments

• Created my Jira Backlog

• Initialised my project (and github) and finished player movement

• Whiteboxed the reception area (intro area)

Not so bad anymore, right? (don't answer that)

Design Doc

Trial Shift design doc contents.

My design doc contained a few mistakes and omissions which may haunt me for the rest of the semester, but seeing as this is a single-person project, I can live with that. I covered most, if not all, of the key points I needed to. If I had to guess where it may suffer, other than obvious mistakes, it would likely be a classic 'breadth but not depth' issue (a phrase I have heard more than a few times at uni.

Flowchart depicting Trial Shift's core gameplay loop.

Flowchart depicting the relationship between the different player states.

Most of the basic gameplay systems have been documented but some things still elude me such as inventory, total content and my workflow. All of this is alarmingly important and a lack of clarity on these elements will likely cause me to scale down the project if I find out that I have bitten off more than I can chew.

Backlog

Jira backlog.

My backlog has been filled with some important tasks I can think of for the first few sprints, mostly in order of priority. As of today (15/02/24), I estimate that I am about 3 days behind schedule, according to my backlog. This is not, however, a reliable time-tracking tool, given how quickly it was cobbled together. I have to research and add time estimates, so I can only guess vaguely how long a task will take.

My plan is to slowly fix the lack of details and any inconsistencies each sprint, keeping most of my focus on getting back on schedule (a pipe dream but a noble one at that).

Lighting

Blender Screenshot

This is a screenshot from an in-progress side project that I'm working. It is a rough model environment for a planned esports event in the Tech Park. I was approached by some students on the esports course who were looking for help with modelling their vision. This also doubled as opportunity for me to practise lighting.

While I still have some ways to go, I better understand how to control mood, focus and clarity of a scene/subject. Composition and level design is still something I am unclear about, so more research is needed there.

Project Update

There are a few things to discuss so I will try to summarise what I have done so far.

Unity screenshot of player.

Player movement was completed with the use of Dave / GameDevelopment's movement tutorials (something I will remember to credit). I initially used a different method with a character controller component and movement script for its ease, but found adding features from different scripts to conflict too much due to Dave's script using rigidbody where the controller script did not.

Reception area.

Corridor leading to janitor room (next scene).

Decent progress has been made on whiteboxing and early tests with textures and colour. It may have been a tad too soon to throw in textures, but they are easily removed. I also plan to reuse assets from other projects to speed up the design process.

My main tool for prototyping was the, formerly third-party, package: ProBuilder. The goal of adding this tool to the project was to speed up prototyping and, in all fairness, it has.

I would not describe my relationship with ProBuilder as a love-hate relationship as that would be giving it too much credit. Instead, it is a deep loathing I hold towards Unity for buying this tool and proceeding to do nothing with it. Many desperately-needed quality-of-life features such as edge loop deletion and better controls have yet to be added since 2018 when these utter clowns bought ProBuilder. Why do large companies so often do this?

Unity CEO John Riccitiello. I will refrain from saying anything that might be considered slanderous.

What's Next?

Whitebox janitor area

I plan to lean more closely into reference images I have to better understand how to convey mood. Later into the game I plan to draw more on horror-themed references (e.g. Outlast or PT).

Inventory

Get item pickups working ASAP and see where you can go from there.

Research

A deeper understanding of what makes good environmental design is needed.