GAME TOOLS 2024 FINAL ASSIGNMENT

Theme: Borders

Group 9 (Cian, Joe, Daniel)

Devlog #1

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We were all really happy with this theme and had a lot of ideas to discuss straight away. Some proposed ideas were “Borderline” which would’ve seen the player manipulate the border/window of the game to create paths for platforming, and “Bored-er” where to win you’d have to strip game mechanics away making the game as boring as possible. However, we quickly pulled back as we didn’t want our ambitions to get too big, deciding instead to lay a simple but solid core mechanic that we could then build on top of later.

The base of our game revolves around two characters, separated by a physical border cutting the screen in half, both characters are controlled by one player, and each’s movement is the inverse of the other (when one moves right the other moves left, etc.).

We took inspiration from games like Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker & Lavaboy and Watergirl. 

Merging isometric compact puzzles with dual movement to create interesting solutions. We then decided to incorporate at least one element we learned from each class, so chose to build our game as a 3D HDRP project. 

We then divided our roles, Daniel would focus on creating all art assets, Cian on the level design and I would handle the programming. 

I limited the player movement to a four-directional grid-based system to make developing other mechanics simpler and to more easily predict player interactions. 

Because the player snaps to a grid location instead of moving with physics, I couldn’t just place colliders around the tiles to block movement. 

To restrict their movement when they reach an edge I placed a 1x1 collider on each corner tile that tells the player script what directions it can't let the player move in and then flipped the restrictions for the inversed character. It's a bit tedious to set up at first but it has the desired effect and I’m quite happy with the outcome.

I then added a reset button using UI so that the player can go back in case they get themselves stuck. I also tied this reset to pressing “R” on your keyboard.

As of now, we’re each committing to our GitHub and gradually implementing features, while following our GDD which we broke down into steps on Trello.

Our GitHub: https://github.com/Dgeoe/Borders-Game-Tools

Our Trello: https://trello.com/b/gDKiM02x/game-tools-borders

The main work ahead of us centers on creating more unique tiles that affect the player in fun ways. Below is a legend breaking down future tile mechanics.

NAME	MOCK-UP	FUNCTION
Tile		Regular Tile
Door		Leads to the next level, Only work with both players
Button		Opens locked doors
Teleporter		Warps a character to the opposite side of the border
Block		A physical block covering one tile

Update (10/05/2024)

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A quick update on what I've done in the last 10 days since this post was made.

1.  Updated Tile Prefabs: I updated the tiles so that they all directly restrict player movement rather than being separate colliders for easier setup. Additionally, I added extra restrictions to allow for blocks in the level and one-way borders.
2. Treadmills: I replaced the idea of the teleporter with a treadmill as it was more clear in demonstrating its purpose to the player.  It can move the player by 1 unit in whatever direction the treadmill is rotated to face.
3.  Animations + Rotations:  I added an animator component to both players and created a script that would rotate the player to face the direction they move in. 

  4.  Name:  I quickly came up with a name and photoshopped a design while incorporating the character models Daniel created.

     5.  Buttons and Doors: I created a simple script for a door and button that works solely using bool functions. It checks if both buttons have been pressed and if both players are standing in front of their corresponding door. Only when all those functions are true will the player be able to cross through the door.