Prototype 3

Overview:

Prototype 3 didn’t build upon the already established mechanics and scripts but instead focused on developing the visual UI so that the group could visualise what the gameplay loop will look like once all the art had been designed and implemented. This prototype was mainly to demonstrate to the group what our first round of playtesting will look like once they had implemented the art into Unity. The main change in this prototype was the UI organisation and refining the screen so that it looked and felt intuitive and engaging. 

Research and Inspiration: 

UI design:

• Before I continued work on the back end development I knew that I had to work on the front end side of things, as such I decided to research the UI of other games. Sophie recommended that I look through the Game UI Database and search for similar genre games to see how they have designed their UI. Here was the noted that i took down whilst browsing:

The UI – it is all of the game screens and elements that contribute to the game experience and game mechanics (diagetic UI). It is described differently from the “menu” (nondiagetic UI) – the outside-of-game UI that takes care of the options and game strating/ending 

Diagetic UI: “A diegetic interface is when a game’s interface elements exist In-Universe; the Player Character sees them, rather than just the player (“Diegetic” meaning “within the narrative”, such as diegetic music).” https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DiegeticInterface  

Simply put then, the player’s information exists within the game’s universe. Here is an example: 

This is a screenshot from Steel Battalion – see that all interfaces are designed so that they fit within the games theme therefore blend in which in turn helps to keep the player immersed. Although Steel Battalion is first person it highlights what it means for the interface to exist within the universe. For a better example of a narrative game that uses diagetic UI, Devil Survivor – Demon Summoning Program implements it throughout their gameplay. 

Here are some examples of games that use Diagetic UI in their UI: https://www.gameuidatabase.com/gameData.php?id=581

• From this you can see how I slightly moved some gameobjects around, like the progress and end day button, to try and give it a less crowded UI to make the game feel more intuitive. Even adjusting things like the width and scale of gameobjects help to facilitate this. 

Sound and Music:

• Although you can’t hear, I did implement the soundtrack and sounds for the mouse click. I predominantly used Unitys audio tutorials to add these in. Yiran personally designed these bits and i just wrote very simple script allowing me to input the audio file and loop it and then just another script where if the left mouse is pressed it plays an audio file of the mouse click sound and then if the left mouse is pressed whilst over a button it will play an additional audio file that i added in the inspector.

What I Developed:

Progress Display:

• Really the biggest change I made was adjusting the Progress display so that it updates each time the resource count is updated. The main reason for this was because I felt it was important for the player to see immediate feedback each time they end the day so they could then adjust their strategy to make sure they are on track to complete the progress tasks before day 7. It was a simple implementation, here is a snippet of the main body of code required to do so:

Layering fixes and UI organisation:

• So far this project has not been without its issues and bugs, however, due to the simplicity of solving them there has been no real need to mention them, but, a recurring issue has been issues with layering. Most of my issues stem from not grasping how I should be layering my gameobjects to make them work how I desire. The issues that have come from this are things such as the character models disappearing once placed, buttons not being able to be interacted with, and character models not appearing when the game is started.

UI Restructure:

• To fix all these issues whilst developing upon the UI it made sense to just restructure the entire UI. This meant layering everything in the correct way to ensure the character stayed in front of all the gameobjects. Whilst reorganizing the UI the main changes i made were the relocation of the End Day button, moving the day and week count and resizing the current camp, character and resource icons. This was influenced by my research done on UI to make the game feel intuitive and look a bit more like a screen that would be controlled by the player in a post apocalyptic world (like it states in the GDD). 
• The game layout now feels clean and should reduce player confusion by not overwhelming them with the buttons in the same place and placing End Day next to the day count to make it more intuitive

Fail State Implementation:

• To give an example of a game loop I set up a quick fail state that is triggered when the player runs out of food. Each day consumes 4 bits of food so if the player does not manage their food resource correctly and runs out of food the fail panel pops up and makes the player restart from that current week

• The reason this is actually really important is that it creates a real consequence system for not keeping track of your resources. Yes, there is a progress bar that must be met but up until now i hadn’t implemented a fail state so players could always continue. This enhances the gameplay feel by adding a sort of tension as players need to determine which camps are best suited for which characters.

Sound Integration:

• As stated I mainly followed Unitys tutorial on sound implementation so the more interesting thing to show would be how I implemented the sound effects for the clicks. I used Unitys AudioSource component to trigger the sound effects that I added into the inspector, one for general clicking and one for the button clicks. Here is how i coded it:

Conclusion: 

In prototype 3 the main focus was on refining the current games foundations and making the game start to function. With the addition of the refined UI, smaller features like restart function, and the sound effects the vertical slice now is starting to feel like a functioning game. We are almost at a point where the game can start to be playtested and see if the direction we have taken this game is both the correct one and is an enjoyable / interesting game to play.