Trial Shift (#4) | April/May MEGABLOG
- Amir Alamri
- Jun 1, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 2, 2024
Yeah so I missed April. Here's what I did over the last two months:
Completed mop and wrench mechanics
Completed facility level
Added locker and door mechanics
Added UI objectives and interaction messages
Baked lighting on all three levels
Added post-processing
Removed jump
Added flickering lights and cues upon objective completion
Added menu, intro and end scenes
Known bugs/issues:
Switching tools in the middle of an animation can cause a visual bug
Lift button not activating doors (have opened doors to get around this)
May have to Alt-F4 to leave game at end
No mouse sensitivity settings
Github push just isn't happening
Thoughts:
Project organisation started well but quickly began to deteriorate on introduction of assets and scripts. Script functions became redundant with many scripts competing for attention and performing similar functions. This makes future problem-solving and edits take much longer due to added confusion. Help from peers also becomes less likely. This was mostly due to a last-minute rush to add in several triggers, with little regard for anything else.
The reception level did not get as much of a visual uplift as the later levels due to poor...TIME MANAGEMENT OK THERE I SAID IT. Certain low-poly assets are a little jarring when compared to the higher quality models and textures elsewhere.
The addition of too many large assets made further Github pushes impossible. The client would time out no matter what system I tried to upload from. One possible solution would have been to get rid of those assets, but by then the progress made was too great to risk breaking the current version. In future, I will be much more conservative when importing assets and try to avoid blindly adding entire packages.
With regards to the horror element, only the facility stands out in my mind as being unnerving enough to adhere to the original intent. This is partially a result of overscoping and spreading myself too thin across different scenes. With a bit more time, I would have liked to include a small cinematic or other horror-themed encounters to push this aspect of the game more.
All this being said, I am still somewhat surprised I made it this far with the project. Currently, Trial Shift is a small, humourous game with perhaps a hint of horror.
A consistent challenge throughout was my lack of strong coding ability but finding ways to achieve certain mechanics, such as objective triggers, proved easier than anticipated. Some scripts I found online, such as a custom event system, made communication between objects and script far easier. Any pressure about keeping well-formatted and organised scripts was removed as the player would only see what was presented before them.
While I acknowledge that it was not a sustainable, long-term work practice, it was sufficient enough for the purposes of this project. Future work on improving this may be difficult due to some of the reasons mentioned above but managing to present a small story with simple mechanics was something I am quite proud of.
PLAY THE GAME:
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