GRACE : GAME TOOLS DEVELOPMENT LOG

As part of my final assignment of my first year, me and my friends assembled to produce a game called Dukie Detective. It’s a 3^rd person top-down mystery game, for a younger audience, based around the given theme BORDERS.

We juggled with some initial concepts and distributed roles. We researched some existing games that suit the theme, like My Sims Agents and Cup Head. I was the planner and programmer, and Eoin and Emily structured the assets, set dressing, dialogue and animation. I think we came together as a very balanced team. 

The idea is that Dukie is a Detective made from paper. While his creator (A real detective) slacks off, Dukie solves the mystery by exploring the evidence in his notebook and testing his knowledge in a later trivia.

The first thing I did was plan! I distributed jobs among members and took a small leadership role in terms of this, worldbuilding and the story. I took many notes and planned out a timeline or series of events for what exactly happens in the game. I created a GitHub repository for me and my teammates and started the unity project.

The first thing I did in game was create a scene with a Shutterstock image background and a white cube. I programmed a character controller to this cube and got it moving. I then moved onto adding two different types of interaction. I designed a mechanic for Dukies (Players) internal dialogue and a zoned camera panelled dialogue for interacting with NPCS. Establishing stylising differences between these things were important, especially in a fictional world, where paper can speak. The player needs to know who and what is talking. I also triggered a “Press E” image that appears and encouraged player interaction.

Once this was finished, I created a “portal” which connects this desk scene to the notebook scene, using build index. It took some trial and error but worked seamlessly very quickly. A bit of iteration was needed as Dukies initial controller prevented him from colliding with certain things.

From here I proceeded onto building the trivia scene. A simple setup; 4 questions with a counter that decides whether you proceed or retry. This posed a much bigger challenge than anticipated. It took 3 separate scripts and about 100 new variables in the inspector. This took me the longest time but felt good completing as it was something entirely my own. Something I’m grateful for during this project among others is my knowledge of C# has increased drastically in the past 30 days.

Once this was tediously completed, I made a main menu scene for the start of the game. Thanks to my knowledge of unity scene manager, it was executed very quickly. I was at a bit of a stalemate at this point, so I wrote the dialogue for the “victim” and helped Eoin with the level design for the notebook.

With some finishing touches and relentless internal playtesting, the game was finished!!