Devlog 1 28/4/2025

Devlog 1

Fabian:

During this first period, I was tasked with developing the player movement. To fit the game's premise, I needed to create two distinct styles of movement: 2D/2.5D and 3D. I achieved this by writing a single script that outlines the player’s movement across both parts of the game, along with a trigger object to handle when the movement style changes.

2D/2.5D Movement: In this mode, the player is locked to horizontal movement along the X-axis, creating a 2.5D style of gameplay. This limits the movement to left and right, giving a classic side-scroller feel. Along with this I added a "follow" cinemachine camera to add the effect of the player being able to look forwards.

3D Movement: After the player passes through a trigger, the gameplay mechanics change, unlocking full 3D third-person movement. In this stage, the player can move freely in all directions. The camera follows the mouse cursor, allowing the player to move more like in a traditional third-person or "souls-like" game. This setup also enables strafing and dodging, greatly expanding the movement possibilities.

Other Player Abilities:

• Dash: The player can press Shift to perform a short speed boost, leaving a super cool flame particle effect in their wake.
• Jump: Jumping is available in both the 2.5D and 3D parts of the game.

All movement settings (such as speed, dash duration, and jump height) are expected to be tweaked throughout production to ensure the game feels as good as possible, especially once combat and obstacles are added.

Creating the movement system was a time-consuming process, but I'm very happy with the result. At this stage, the transition between 2.5D and 3D movement works seamlessly.

References:

Particle effect: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/particles/spells/48-particle-effect-pa...

Micah:

I began work on the game by adding in the Big Ben prefab and adding clockfaces to it. I gave it a simple movement script in order to make it predictively chase the player, and made so that you could trigger this to come into play if you were to walk into a cube. I also made so that this triggers the appearance of a health bar for The Clock Tower.

I went on to add an angry man to the 2D part of the game that gives random voice lines when the ‘E’ key is pressed. I did this by using a random number generator to select a random voice line from a list of recordings (by Fabian and myself) and play it. I made so you could only trigger one of these voice lines at a time by checking if one is playing when ‘E’ is pressed; you also need to be within a certain radius of the man for this to work. You can see when you are inside of this radius because a “Press ‘E’ to talk” prompt will appear.

After completing this, I imported my Wrest Point model into the game, and similarly to the angry man, added in the prompt to press ‘E’. If you press this button while in the casino’s radius, a new screen comes up that has a slot machine mini game in it. I used the same random number generator function as before to get this working. I also had to do some studying up on UI functionality in order to execute this without it being a total mess. While this mini game might currently seem detached from the wider game it will allow you to gamble with your health before the final boss battle eventually, leaving you with either additional or less health than before. The way the slots machine works is you enter a bet that must be equal to or lower than your balance and press enter. Once you’ve done this, you can bet. If there are no matching numbers, you will have your current bet deducted from your balance. If you have two matching numbers, you will have your current bet added to your balance. If you have three matching numbers, you will have double your bet added to your balance.

References:

Big Ben - https://free3d.com/3d-model/-big-ben-v2--15945.html

Clock Face - https://www.freepik.com/free-psd/clock-isolated-transparent-background_82636030....

Old Man - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/humanoids/humans/beard-man-i...

Health Bars and Fonts - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/gui/icons/steampunkui-238976

Daneika:

My task for this week was to create a basic model for our player character. The design for our character was based off of a few AI images that we generated for our concept document. The basics idea behind our character is that he would be a cute/goofy green bug guy, with beady eyes, antennas, and a cloak. When starting this task, I didn't know how to approach creating a proper humanoid character, so I found a tutorial created by Joey Carlino on Youtube, and used it as a guide to create the initial basic shapes. 

It was decided that during this early stage of development, the character would not yet have a cloak added, to reduce time. The cloak may be added back later in development, along with the choice for the player to equip it or not.

References:

Character Modelling Tutorial: Character modeling for beginners - Blender - YouTube