Month: November 2022

This is the fifth devlog of the Final Major Project, which is the last devlog of the project. This would mainly talk about the focus on the playtest, pities, reflection.

Playtest

The first fully playable demo of the game came out just two weeks before the deadline, I tried to get as many of my classmates and friends as possible to test my game, both in class and in private. Although I had been testing the project myself, when I let others test it, many problems arose, and over thirty bugs were found in two days. This again made me realise the need for playtesting in game-making and that we need to set aside enough time for it. At the same time, the game received a lot of suggestions, and based on the suggestions, I thought about them again and adopted some of them, but some of them were not adopted due to the difficulty and my own wishes.
Suggestions adopted

1. Add a button to run (players have reported that they spend part of the game walking around, but some areas are not interactive and the slowness of the process reduces the player’s interest. Players can now run in-game by holding down the shift key, which is 1.5 times faster than normal walking)
2. Add a quest panel (players have reported that there are few in-game hints that lack clear guidance. After talking about this issue, it was found that non-native English speakers, in particular, read the text more perfunctorily and would ignore clues in the dialogue, even if the clues were clear. In the middle of the project, I actually wanted to include a quest panel, but given that the main theme of the game is narrative, I was concerned that the presence of a quest panel would reduce the player’s interest in reading the text. In the end, I added the quest panel, considering that I was sometimes perfunctory with dialogue when playing the game and would seek reminders from the quest panel. The task panel can now be viewed in-game by pressing the ECS key, making it much clearer what needs to be done next)
3. Change the function of the keys (in the original design, the E key was to open a conversation and the F key was to continue the conversation. The reason for this was to prevent accidental presses when conversing. However, players reported that the independence of the two keys would feel awkward, so all interactive keys for dialogue were merged into the E key)
4. View size adjustment (within the ark, the view was resized to a quarter of the size of the rest of the map in order to give the player a better view of the internal structure. However, players reported that this size was uncomfortable and that it was easy to overlook information on the upper and lower sides of the camera, so the camera size was doubled inside the ark)

Suggestions not adopted

1. Add maps (considering there are only four main scenes, maps are not used much)
2. Dub the dialogue (considered dubbing the text, but couldn’t find a friend with the right tone in my head)
3. Skip dialogue (personally, I think skipping dialogue in a narrative game will directly reduce the content of the game and greatly affect the experience)

Pities

The background music is what I personally feel pity in my mind about this project. I personally believe that for all electronic media today, music is essential. A good soundtrack may not make a good game, however, a good game must have a good soundtrack. My personal love for music is second only to games. In the second semester, my easy is on game soundtracks. In this paper, the case study object, Nier Automata OST, was something I could not forget, especially because it used the Chaos Language, giving it a distant yet familiar feel. This soundtrack had a profound effect on me, and I hope to use them in my games. Next, Hans Zimmer is my favourite film score artist and his music Interstellar gives the audience a claustrophobic and deep, sad and fervent emotion. Finally, Low Roar is one of my favourite bands. Their work on Death Stranding is something I will never forget. However, Low Roar’s lead singer Ryan passed away in October this year and I had originally envisioned adding their songs to the final scene of the game to honour the memory of this wonderful musician.

However, I forgot the copyright issue of the music.

As a student of game design, perhaps in the future I will have my own intellectual copyright and will defend my rights. I cannot use them without their permission, even if perhaps it is a non-commercial project. After a copyright check of the music, the music from Nier Automata and Hans Zimmer had to be replaced. Also, the songs from Low Roar were deleted in consideration of the whole game’s music style.
In the end, I bought the license to use the music by Lorien to play them through the game. This package includes 12 original compositions in a fantastic and emotional music style.
This paragraph ends with a reflection on my own lack of copyright awareness, respect for the musicians who are willing to share their work, and thanks to all those who have contributed to the game’s soundtrack.

Reflection

Another point worth reflecting on after the project has been completed is to check the framework with that of the initial project plan. Through my previous research, I have come to the general conclusion that the adoption of myth in video games is mainly reflected in the narrative, character design and gameplay. Not only do the characters in the backstory form between the player and the game, but they also form a Through my previous research, I have come to the general conclusion that the adoption of mythology in video games is mainly reflected in the narrative, character design and gameplay. The characters in the backstory are not only formed between the player and the game, but also form a mythic structure of ‘departure, initiation and return’.

First of all, the game’s adopt of mythology is mainly in the narrative, but also in the character design, with the design of Nuwa riding on a cloud, which also reflects a bit of Chinese mythology. For the narrative, the game begins with the story of Noah’s Ark from Genesis and uses the Chinese myth of Nuwa mending the heavens as the main story line of the game. Unfortunately, the mythology is not adopted in the gameplay. In the very first design, the way to get the five phases is through five different mini-games and some oriental mythological elements could be used in the gameplay of these mini-games. In terms of story structure, the game’s structure is generally in line with the “Depature, Initiation and Return” , but it is also mentioned this structure tends to include “the protagonist tends to fail once before he grows”. In this game, the player does not experience failure. The reason for not including this plot is due to the limitations of the game’s length. It would have been more difficult to include a narrative that forced the character to fail and then grow within a 5-30 minute game. If not handled properly, it would have come across as an overly contrived plot. In the game, I wanted this story itself to change the player or rather Noah’s actions in the original Genesis text, and I considered this psychological shift as a motivation to drive the plot as well. At last, the use of explicit and implicit mythology. Although there is a distinction between primary and secondary quest within the game, and although the player’s explore has an impact on the game’s ending, unfortunately, only the narrative in the main quest employs more mythology, while the narrative in the side quests is more about shaping the individual characters with only a small message about the mythology itself.

Overall, the game is generally in line with the initial findings and direction of the production, with a few tweaks and a few lacks pieces on top of that.

Last thought

When I was very young, I remembered a lot of Chinese myths and stories. As the internet has grown, I’ve slowly heard plenty of stories from lands that don’t belong to me. I was confused at first why so many stories had the same beginning but developed into different endings, until I heard more voices, saw more sights, understood more attitudes and meet more people with different stoies. War and Pandemic might be the main themes of the past two years. In order to keep safe and survive, many people began to feel hostile to other people, built long walls to reject outside, and no longer accepted stories from afar.

This reminds me of a passage by Hideo Kojima:

Even if the earth were stripped of life and reduced to a barren wasteland,
Our imagination and desire to create would persevere beyond survival,
It would provide hope that flowers may one day will bloom again,
Through the invention of play,
Our new evolution awaits.

This is my motivation of making game, and I want to keep making games.
This is the last devlog of the project, and also maybe the last post as a student.
Many thanks to David, Maddalena, Zans and Richard.

This is the fourth devlog of the Final Major Project, which would mainly discuss the ending and some partial effects in-game.

Ending

There will be two main endings to this game. The players’ actions once they board the ark will greatly affect the course of the game.

If the player chooses to sleep five times and they will enter the first ending, which is primarily a reference to the story in Genesis, where Noah and the rest of the creatures calmly escape the flood on the ark, which eventually fades away and most of the beasts die due to the flood.

The idea of the ending is also made in the way of Noah’s diary, which is to echo Noah’s diary that can be found in the game and at the same time strengthen the integrity and story of the game. In it, I have taken some extracts from books such as

The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD is enthroned as King forever. (Psalm 29:10)

The rest is adapted from the Genesis account. (Genesis 7 to 8).

Meanwhile, according to the description in Genesis, the rain lasted for forty days and forty nights, so following Noah’s diary forwards for forty days, the fifty-first day was taken as the time of this ending.

Now for the second ending. The second ending will be triggered when the player has collected all five phases. The second ending is set for the twenty-first day, and unlike the other ending, this one will describe the aftermath of Noah’s success in stopping the Great Water. It is worth noting that this ending is actually split into two segments. The first paragraph has a different textual description depending on the player’s interaction within the game.
There are a total of five objects within the game that will each trigger a hidden message for the ending.

1. Mr Shark (by talking to the shark chasing you in the lake)
2. Uncle Ryan (by interacting with the cross in the confessional)
3. Rocket Rooster (by interacting with the cross in the confessional after gaining the ability to talk to animals)
4. Mickey mouse (after gaining the ability to talk to animals, talk to mickey mouse)
5. Bruce Bat (after obtaining the fire elemental stone, read the letter left by Bruce at the bottom of the passage to the right deck)
   The above five parts make up the first paragraph of this ending. The reason for this is to reward the player for exploring more in the game as well as trying to make the story of the game more lively.

The second paragraph of dialogue in this ending is not affected by other factors. The text is mainly a description of Noah’s situation and reflections after he has successfully stopped the great flood.

Particle Effects

There are many particle effects in the game, including different sizes of rain, falling leaves and fog. Here I would like to mention mainly the design of the rain. At the beginning of the production process, I always felt that even with the different frequencies of rain (as reflected in the number of particles generated per second), the rain was not impactful and three-dimensional enough. So I made the rain in the project three-dimensional. This made the effect making the rain falling on different z-axes so that the rain would cover all the different layers.

The main reason for writing this article is to remind me that we cannot be limited in our thinking and that we understand that since there is a different sorting order in two-dimensional games, some of the performance can be created from this point of view.

This is the third devlog of the Final Major Project, which would mainly discuss the project reduction and specific scenes in the game.

Project reduction

The game was abridged and rewritten based on its length, and David felt that a game length of 3 to 5 minutes would be appropriate for a better presentation at the graduation exhibition. At the same time, the approaching deadline and the unfinished content of the current project also forced me to remove parts of the game and shorten the time needed for the respective scenes. It was clear from this that there was a lack of personal time management and time allocation skills, as well as a lack of an accurate estimate of the approximate time needed to complete the project.

It was a difficult decision to cut some of the game’s content, as the game would have a narrative theme and my storytelling skills were not sufficient to express my ideas in a short playthrough. The changed vision is for the game to take about five to thirty minutes, depending on the player’s choices at key points in the story, and the decision whether to go and talk to more side NPCs.

The specific cuts and changes will be mentioned specifically below.

Art

Some of the textures for this project come from the Internet, but to better suit my ideas, some are made by myself. Including crosses, beds, tables and chairs with wood texture, large crosses more in line with the theme, auspicious clouds floating with Nuwa etc.

Lake in Cave

A lake has been added to the right of the cave. Here the player will find the water elemental stones. The original plan was for players to be able to jump from the boat into the sea to find the water elemental stones, but in order to cut down on play time, the two maps have been combined into one.

In the lake, there will be a shark constantly chasing the player. However, the player does not die or end the game when he is caught. Here, I’ve used an unconventional design where the shark chases the player and opens a hidden dialogue about the relationship between the shark and the creatures on the ark and part of the background to Nuwa. The purpose of this is to make the creatures in the game seem more friendly and kind. Before the player come to the lake, the player might learn some information about the shark if they have previously spoken to a side NPC on the ark, to suggest that the shark’s presence is not a danger.

Ark inside

The ark will consist of five parts: Noah’s bedroom, the confessional, the storeroom, New Eden and the hidden access to the right-hand deck.

In Noah’s bedroom, the interactable objects will be Noah’s diary and a bed. Noah’s diary consists of seven days of the story of the seven days after Noah learns from God that the flood is coming. (Seven days because according to Genesis, God told Noah that a flood would occur seven days later). The bed is available for the player to rest on. After the player has rested for the first time, the player will find the arrival of Nuwa. Nuwa will then give a quest line for Noah. At this point, the player can either follow Nuwa’s lead to repair the sky or choose to go back to sleep and let the story unfold as it was written in Genesis. When the player has slept 5 times, they will enter the first ending. Specific instructions on the ending will be explained in the future.

The interactable objects in the confessional are mainly crosses and bats. Most bats would indeed dislike the sun, but bats cannot do without it and research has shown that bats use the sun to calibrate their geomagnetic compass to pinpoint the direction of their flight. Bruce the bat is a warmth-loving bat. He will show his urgency to miss his people in the game. The brave man will sacrifice himself in the later scene to refine the fire elemental stone to help Noah mend the sky and save his people. After that, players can find a letter left by the bat near the hidden pathway leading to the right deck. In addition, most of the crosses in the confessional are interactive and players can find confessions left by different creatures on them. These include Noah, Noah’s uncle and some of the animals.

The interactable object in the storeroom is the wolf. At the very beginning of the game, the storage room is closed. When the player accepts the quest provided by Nuwa, the room will be opened and the player can find the gold elemental stone inside. This hidden clue can be found by talking to the wolf.

The New Eden is inhabited by various animals. They were all conversable. However, at first, the player cannot understand what the animals are saying when he talks to them. When Noah first meets Nuwa, Nuwa will give Noah the ability to communicate with the animals in the hope that Noah will understand his animal friends better. All of these conversations with the animals are not necessary and are included as optional gameplay content to help the player better understand this one game.

The right side of Ark’s deck

When the player has collected all five elemental stones, the pathway to the right deck will be opened. The player will say goodbye to Nuwa on the deck and go up to the sky alone to repair the sky.

This is the second devlog of the Final Major Project, which would mainly discuss the first design, art and some scenes.

Design of Game Flow

The game starts in the forest and in this scene the player is instructed in basic manoeuvres such as walking and jumping. At the end of the forest is the ark.
The first time the player boards the ark, he meets Nuwa, who invites the player to join her in collecting the power of various elements to end floods and heavy rains.
The player can choose to sleep on the ark, and several nights of sleep will lead to the end of the game, which is God’s autonomous termination of the flood, but the living creatures are destroyed except Noah’s family.
Players accept Nuwa’s quest and will be guided to find the four elemental stones of wood, earth, metal and water in turn. (It should have been five elemental stones, still thinking about how to deal with the acquisition of fire elemental stones).
Players will be guided to the forest they have been to before. Due to the flood, the topography of the forest has changed and players find caves that go to the ground.
In the cave, the player needs to escape from the cave before the flood rises. At the end of the cave, players will find the earth elemental stone and the exit back to the forest.
Continuing to explore the forest will reveal wood elemental stones and materials that can be made into a rudder, which the player brings back to the ark to make it start to drive away. (The Bible records many interesting facts about the construction of the ark. According to Genesis, the ark had three levels, a window and a door. But the ark did not have a rudder, which some scholars interpret to mean that the ark did not need a rudder, that God was the captain of the ark, and that God did not need a rudder to guide the ship’s forward direction.)
Inside the cabin, players can find metal elemental stones and diving tools (which need further consideration), and the diving tools allow players to breathe freely underwater.
Once the diving tools are got, the player can dive underwater to find the water elemental stones.
The content related to fire elemental stones needs further design.
After collecting all the elemental stones, Nuwa will evaporate the rainwater with the power of fire, forming steam for the player to swim and levitate, and the player can enter the clouds through this channel.
On the cloud layer, the player eventually faces God directly and fixes the cloud, ending the flood early.

Art

The first idea I had was to make a pixel-style game. Because in terms of difficulty, this style is easier to make scenes and characters. Some of the characters were designed regarding the pixel art in MapleStory. Also made idle, walking animations for them.

However, in the process of drawing the scene, I began to negate this design. In this game, I wanted to render more of an apocalyptic-like despair, but for me personally, my ideas about pixel art are stuck at the level of cuteness and simplicity. With this in mind, I started to think again about whether I should continue to take the pixel style or change it. That’s when I thought of one game that used to inspire me, You Will (Not) Remain’. You Will (Not) Remain’, which could give players a brief, quiet and deep experience. Its hopeless and Lovecraftian atmosphere helps the player to connect better with the main character’s feeling of emptiness and its interaction with the enclosed world where it lives.

In this game, the black and white colour palette renders the game’s apocalyptic atmosphere. At the same time, the purple objects play the role of guidance and hints in the game on the one hand and enrich the colour of the picture in the composition on the other.

In deciding to go to black and white as the main colour of the game, I remembered the game called Limbo. The game is presented in black and white. Lighting, cinematic grain effects and minimal ambient sound are used to create an eerie atmosphere usually associated with the horror genre. Journalists praised the dark presentation, describing the work as comparable to film noir and German expressionism.

This art style gave me a shock at the time, so I finally decided to redesign the characters and scenes in this dark art style.

Forest

Details still need to be enhanced, including background, and light.

Cave

Details still need to be enhanced, including backgrounds, and particle effects (falling rocks).

Ark

The ark is inspired by the movie 2012. 2012 as a flood disaster film, in part, is a homage to the myth of Noah’s ark in Genesis. I think the design of Noah’s Ark in 2012 is a good restoration of the mythical ark and incorporates modern technology.

Coding

• A* Path Finding

In the game, Nuwa is assigned to follow the player. To achieve this, an automatic path-finding algorithm needs to be introduced.A* (A star) is a graph traversal and path search algorithm that is used in many areas of computer science due to its completeness, optimality and optimal efficiency. A major practical drawback is its spatial complexity since it stores all generated nodes in memory. Therefore, it is usually preferred to algorithms that can preprocess graphs for better performance in real travel route systems, as well as to memory-constrained methods; however, in many cases, A* is still the best solution.

By importing the Pathfinding framework, the A* pathfinding algorithm can be easily invoked in unity. In addition to the scripts that come with the framework, I can create my own scripts to better fit this project.

• Scene Transition

• Pause Menu