the Endless Runner
For our third Proof of Concept our team was tasked with creating a concept that incorporated one of the following archetypes:
- Endless Runner
- Brawler
- Turn Based Strategy
The catch for this proof of concept is that we had to incorporate interfaces into our code. A interface is basically a contract within the code which makes the code more modular. The reason why we chose this archetype is because we thought it would be the most fun and we thought it would test our skills the most.
My responsibilities for this proof of concept was team manager, UI implementation, and coding. Like our last concept we split the tasks evenly based upon our skills and what we wanted to tackle. I enjoyed doing the implementation of the UI as well coding the implementation of it.
As the team manager i made sure to schedule all of our meetings for the week. We had two scheduled meetings for this concept to discuss what everyone was doing for the concept. The second one was to make sure everyone was on track and to sort out any problems we were having with our tasks or with the game itself. Meeting have become a mandatory practice that I have implemented due to all the benefits that comes with the meetings. As the team leader I also created the trello board for the team and created all the cards that need to be completed. The trello board was not used as much as I would have like last week for our 2nd proof of concept due to the fact of people just doing their own thing. So this week I made sure to let my group know that we have to use it more efficiently and frequently because we were having problems with keeping track of who did what, and what was done or not. I also created, for organisation sake, was a another google drive for our third concept so that everyone could drop the done work into the drive for everyone to access. Like all of the concepts I also conducted a brainstorming session once we got our idea so that we could get a firm grasp on what we wanted to attempt. I also had incorporated smaller sessions within our meetings for problems we had or for things that e wanted to add to the game. I really love incorporating these to our meetings because our group is full of critical and creative thinkers which makes them that much more effective. We have come up with some awesome ideas if were not for the help of the brainstorming sessions.
The other task that I was given for this concept was UI implementation for the score as well as coding. When we distributed the work load I really wanted to do this part because I had enjoyed working with the UI from our previous concept. So what we wanted for our scoring system was to have coins that they could collect like the endless runner: Temple Run. Instead of having three different we just wanted to have two sets of coins, so for instance we have a big and small coin. The big coin counts for 10 points and the small coin counts for 1 points. The way I coded the score was adding collision detection onto the player script. so how it work is that when the player collided with the coin it would compare tags with the object. So if the player collided with a small coin it would then add 1 to the score based on the tag it had. The same thing happens with the big coin. So whatever the tag of the coin was dictated the amount of points. Which was helpful because we could then add that into the interfaces and have multiple tags and essentially have numerous coins with different score amounts. Now the more trickier part of this code was manipulating the canvas text to show the score. So some challenges that I had with this code was not understanding how to go about it. so at first I wanted to type in the text and then add to the text. Which made sense in my head but did't work in the least. So I went on the unity forums to figure out a much easier to go about this. The funny thing was, was that i wasn't too far off with my initial idea. So basically within the code you had to manipulate the score text directly by printing score and then adding in the count. From there you made the text a public variable that you dragged into the script. other than that I did not have any other trouble with the code.
I did however try to work with interfaces. I was unsuccessful at trying to make them work. I went through many tutorials and forums to try and figure out how to implement them properly. Unfortunately I could not get a grasp on how to implement them. So I had to hand that part off to our lead coder Vivek, who was able to explain to me how to go about it next time.
The other thing that we had problems with was the shadows. As dumb as this sounds the shadows were not working what so ever. Fro some reason they were being turned off once the scene was being played. So Ian and I spent a good half hour trying to figure why this thing was happening. We fiddled with a bunch of stuff and did a few google searches but nothing was seeming to work. So we just started playing with a bunch of options and setting. Finally we went into the quality setting and played with the matrices and surely enough it worked.
We then tried to implement this on the master copy and sure as hell it was a different problem. So we went into the material shaders and noticed on top of playing with the matrices the shaders were set to transparent for some reason.
I am very satisfied on how this concept came about. It turned out really good. However if i were to visit this project again to turn it into a full fledged or prototype then there would be a few changes that I would like to implement.
One of the changes I would like to make to the game is the animations to the lizard and the moving objects. It would give the game a overall better feel and would make it more polished.
Another change that I would like to make to our game would be adding in more paths as well as different chunk shapes. Like temple run they have where you can turn and switch direction so that its not so linear. I think if we added that depth to our game it would make it a lot more fun and complete. because it gives player choice along with the endless runner feel. I would also like to edit the chunks themselves. What do I mean by this? Well basically we only have 2 chunks which are the regular path and the water path. I would at least like to add three more to give our runner some variety and more scenery.
A must change would be our player model. right now it is a dinosaur and we wanted to base our lizard off the "Jesus Lizard" or the basilisk lizard in proper terms. So myself and Ian would definitely model and animate the player model so that when it picks up a speed boost then it would look like the model is running faster and when it hits an obstacle then it would look like its slowing down. Also adding a jump animation would make it look more crisp.
Overall I am very happy on how this concept has turned out. Our team did an excellent job once again with getting their tasks done and implementing them on time so that we are not pulling an all nighter the night before the presentation.
As the team manager i made sure to schedule all of our meetings for the week. We had two scheduled meetings for this concept to discuss what everyone was doing for the concept. The second one was to make sure everyone was on track and to sort out any problems we were having with our tasks or with the game itself. Meeting have become a mandatory practice that I have implemented due to all the benefits that comes with the meetings. As the team leader I also created the trello board for the team and created all the cards that need to be completed. The trello board was not used as much as I would have like last week for our 2nd proof of concept due to the fact of people just doing their own thing. So this week I made sure to let my group know that we have to use it more efficiently and frequently because we were having problems with keeping track of who did what, and what was done or not. I also created, for organisation sake, was a another google drive for our third concept so that everyone could drop the done work into the drive for everyone to access. Like all of the concepts I also conducted a brainstorming session once we got our idea so that we could get a firm grasp on what we wanted to attempt. I also had incorporated smaller sessions within our meetings for problems we had or for things that e wanted to add to the game. I really love incorporating these to our meetings because our group is full of critical and creative thinkers which makes them that much more effective. We have come up with some awesome ideas if were not for the help of the brainstorming sessions.
The other task that I was given for this concept was UI implementation for the score as well as coding. When we distributed the work load I really wanted to do this part because I had enjoyed working with the UI from our previous concept. So what we wanted for our scoring system was to have coins that they could collect like the endless runner: Temple Run. Instead of having three different we just wanted to have two sets of coins, so for instance we have a big and small coin. The big coin counts for 10 points and the small coin counts for 1 points. The way I coded the score was adding collision detection onto the player script. so how it work is that when the player collided with the coin it would compare tags with the object. So if the player collided with a small coin it would then add 1 to the score based on the tag it had. The same thing happens with the big coin. So whatever the tag of the coin was dictated the amount of points. Which was helpful because we could then add that into the interfaces and have multiple tags and essentially have numerous coins with different score amounts. Now the more trickier part of this code was manipulating the canvas text to show the score. So some challenges that I had with this code was not understanding how to go about it. so at first I wanted to type in the text and then add to the text. Which made sense in my head but did't work in the least. So I went on the unity forums to figure out a much easier to go about this. The funny thing was, was that i wasn't too far off with my initial idea. So basically within the code you had to manipulate the score text directly by printing score and then adding in the count. From there you made the text a public variable that you dragged into the script. other than that I did not have any other trouble with the code.
I did however try to work with interfaces. I was unsuccessful at trying to make them work. I went through many tutorials and forums to try and figure out how to implement them properly. Unfortunately I could not get a grasp on how to implement them. So I had to hand that part off to our lead coder Vivek, who was able to explain to me how to go about it next time.
The other thing that we had problems with was the shadows. As dumb as this sounds the shadows were not working what so ever. Fro some reason they were being turned off once the scene was being played. So Ian and I spent a good half hour trying to figure why this thing was happening. We fiddled with a bunch of stuff and did a few google searches but nothing was seeming to work. So we just started playing with a bunch of options and setting. Finally we went into the quality setting and played with the matrices and surely enough it worked.
We then tried to implement this on the master copy and sure as hell it was a different problem. So we went into the material shaders and noticed on top of playing with the matrices the shaders were set to transparent for some reason.
I am very satisfied on how this concept came about. It turned out really good. However if i were to visit this project again to turn it into a full fledged or prototype then there would be a few changes that I would like to implement.
One of the changes I would like to make to the game is the animations to the lizard and the moving objects. It would give the game a overall better feel and would make it more polished.
Another change that I would like to make to our game would be adding in more paths as well as different chunk shapes. Like temple run they have where you can turn and switch direction so that its not so linear. I think if we added that depth to our game it would make it a lot more fun and complete. because it gives player choice along with the endless runner feel. I would also like to edit the chunks themselves. What do I mean by this? Well basically we only have 2 chunks which are the regular path and the water path. I would at least like to add three more to give our runner some variety and more scenery.
A must change would be our player model. right now it is a dinosaur and we wanted to base our lizard off the "Jesus Lizard" or the basilisk lizard in proper terms. So myself and Ian would definitely model and animate the player model so that when it picks up a speed boost then it would look like the model is running faster and when it hits an obstacle then it would look like its slowing down. Also adding a jump animation would make it look more crisp.
Overall I am very happy on how this concept has turned out. Our team did an excellent job once again with getting their tasks done and implementing them on time so that we are not pulling an all nighter the night before the presentation.
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