Following my previous post explaining the timetable for the first semester, it been recommended to me that I go into more depth about the games I will be creating, and the mechanics I'll be focusing on with them. Remember, my intended final project of this semester is a top-down shoot-'em-up.
So, straight into it with the First Tutorial Project:
I've chosen a fairly generic platformer tutorial series from YouTube to base my first project on.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPV2KyIb3jR42oVBU6K2DIL6Y22Ry9J1c
While platformers are considered (by developers, at least) to be fairly complex, I feel that this will carry a great deal of value for my final project in terms of mechanics, and will give me a strong knowledge basis to continue the project series on.
This tutorial will help me to produce the following relevant game mechanics:
- Precise controlled movement
- A scrolling camera
- Basic aim-and-shoot mechanics
- Scrolling backgrounds
This tutorial will cover the first two weeks of the practical part of my dissertation, spanning from Monday the 10th of November to Sunday the 23rd of November. As I have stated previously, in that time I will spend the first week (the 10th to the 16th) following the tutorial, and the second week (the 17th to the 23rd) using the same code to produce my own variant of the game, demonstrating my learning.
Next, the Second Tutorial Project:
The second project will use a text-based tutorial describing the creation of a maze game as its basis.
The concept for this is fairly simple; the maze is created via random generation, and the player must explore the maze and find the way out from a first-person perspective.
This tutorial will provide me with the following mechanics and techniques:
- Simple randomly-generated three-dimensional environments
- A basic three-dimensional mini-map covering the level and player
This tutorial will span from Monday the 24th November to Sunday the 7th of December, the tutorial phase lasting from the 24th to the 30th, and the conversion phase lasting from the 1st to the end of the project on the 7th.
The Third Tutorial Project:
After a great deal of searching, I have had to settle for the final tutorial of the semester. The third tutorial describes the creation of a tower defence game in Unity; the problem with it is that the code is written in JavaScript, not C#.
Being (somehow) unable to find a reasonably good quality tutorial for a similar game in English which uses C#, I have decided to simply use this tutorial and translate the code to the best of my ability as I go. It will certainly be challenging, but the rewards of studying a tower defence game should make it worth it:
- Object tracking (rotating one object to follow another)
- More advanced shooting mechanics
- AI pathing
This project will run from Monday the 8th to Sunday the 21st of December. The tutorial phase will conclude on Sunday the 14th, and the conversion phase will begin on Monday the 15th.
Lastly, The Final Project:
With all of the mechanics I will learn in the coming weeks, the final project should feature:
- Reasonably precise player movement
- A scrolling camera that follows the player around the game world
- Randomly generated environments
- A three-dimensional map of the game world, including the player's position
- AI opponents which track and follow the player with some basic pathing
- And, of course, a good deal of shooting (with player-controlled aiming)
The final project will be running over Christmas and into the new year, beginning on Monday the 22nd of December, and concluding on Friday the 16th of January. While I fully expect my progress to slow over Christmas, with four weeks and no time set aside for any tutorials, I'm confident I will be able to complete the project on time.
I'm frankly optimistic about this project series. I'm eager to begin, and looking forward especially to the final project where I'll really be able to play around with the code techniques I've already started learning, and will continue to discover in the coming weeks.
Before I can get to that, though, I do of course need to finish my proposal, the next part of which will be academic reading. More blog posts will follow with that and any other areas I need to add to.
Until then, have a glorious day, readers.
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