Dev Logs

Game Concept:

This jam's theme is "Glass Half Full". It's an interesting theme, whether you go for a physically half full glass or take the  idiom meaning you have an optimistic outlook. But despite it being an interesting theme, I felt very constrained by it with limited options. I didn't want to just go the expected "fill a glass half full" route, and I wanted to steer clear of making a story around the theme because otherwise I'd get carried away with drafting the story rather than the game. I did not have the time to flesh out a good story.

I jotted down some ideas and mechanics to perhaps build a game around. Words that came to mind included:

• Flipping
• Yin-Yang
• Perspective Puzzle
• Water

"Water" in particular stood out to me because someone got me talking about marine animals, and I came to the realisation that fish use their swim bladder to control their buoyancy in the water without expending energy. That concept gave me the idea to instead making a glass that is half full, the player has to control a fish to ensure that it is always half full, lest the fish will rise or sink into danger.

So this is what I have decided to do: Create a runner game where the player must control the buoyance of a fish, ensuring that their water balance is always half. They will have to restock resources on the seafloor while also dodging predators.

I really like this idea because it ties my knowledge in Marine Science together and potential helps unintentionally promote awareness of the Great Southern Reef.

Day 1:

Today's focus was on getting a semi-controllable fish active with a basic environment to test in. The movement of the fish was really easy to do, as it automatically moves itself and changes vertical velocity through calculations. No player inputs were needed, though I will probably add some in down the line to give some level of adjacency. I also hooked the camera up so that it treks slightly ahead of the player. Really simple thing to do and I'll add guard rails later on to restrict the vertical range.

I also added a basic UI that acts as the player's way of viewing the fish's buoyancy, so that they can aim to maintain the buoyancy.

As for the environment, I used Unity's tilemap system. I haven't used tilemaps in quite a long time so I had to relearn some stuff with tilemaps, but once I got used to it again, it was all fine. I had more problems with the art assets themselves because the spritesheet I got from Kenneys did not align well with Unity's sprite slicing, and I was sorely reminded of how inconvenient the whole sprite slicing and tile mapping is. But at least that part is out of the way now.

Here is an animation of the current work:

The next plan will be adding some extra UI elements (such as distance tracker), environmental hazards, and ways for the player to better control their fish.

Day 2:

Today I gave some physic adjustments to the fish where you could leap out of the water and gravity would pull you back down. I'm really happy with how it turned out because it's really satisfying leaping out and diving back down. I also modified the fish's rotation so that it would face the direction it's travelling in, helping give that visual coolness of it arcing through the air.

I also added some basic controls while I still didn't have definitive control scheme to manipulate the fish's buoyancy yet.

I also added a simple distance tracker on the top-left to display how far the fish has travelled. It is a 1:1 ratio between meters and Unity's unit of distance.

Day 3:

I struggled to get much done today being sick and all. I just couldn't focus or concentrate on a task for very long and just kept getting tired. I'm even writing this the day after because it's just too much to think unfortunately.

What I did get done was a basic food system to help with resource managed. I created 3 types of food: Golden Kelp, Crayweed, and Neptune's Necklace; all types of seaweed that provide different effects. Crayweed is designed to lay on the sea floor and refill the player's buoyancy meter. Golden kelp is placed slightly higher and provides some verticality boost charges to dodge obstacles. And Neptune's Necklace is supposed to be a simple fun bash mechanic to give some reward, though that I haven't fleshed out yet because I don't know what I want to do with that yet.

Haven't done any testing yet because I couldn't focus, but we'll see how we do later. But that's it for today.

Day 4:

Today I finished making the food mechanics. I've just gone with the golden kelp and crayweed to keep the game simple as I don't quite have the time to make Neptune's Necklace's "bash" mechanic. The player interactions with the food is all working and the UI works perfectly fine.

The main thing I spent time on today was a simple algorithm that would randomly place the foods across the level, getting more scarce as the distance increases, making it more difficult to control your stats later on.

Day 5:

I didn't like how the movement was feeling. I did want it to be jank, but it felt way too jank. So I reworked the movement so that you could have slight control with the original up and down, but I made a focus on the burst movement being the main form of control, because I want to try and make it a resource management.

I changed the Crayweed so that it now improves controls of the fish when swimming through to incentivise following its trail.

I also added some barriers that are obstacles to impede the player to give some better incentives to continue running.

Day 6:

Today, I just made some finishing touches which included adding seaweed sprites (assets from https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/hand-drawn-coral-collection_4436244.htm#from...) to the food and giving the barriers some texture in the form of pipes (assets from https://ninjikin.itch.io/water).

I added some extra UI prompts to give more options to the player and am happy with where I have it currently.

I also added a simple score save system using Unity's PlayerPref. It was very easy to implement, just needing assign the distance value at the end and comparing it with the current high score in the system.

Although I am happy with how it turned out, I'm a little disappointed that it turned out as an underwater Flappy Bird, but unfortunately I did not have much time to experiment, especially as I got sick through the jam.

The movement was really the tricky part of it all, as I couldn't quite find something that was jank, but still gave some level of control. It would either be too easy to control, or too hard and impossible to navigate. I settled with this iteration where the player has slight control over the movement, but is primarily incentivised to use the "dash" movement due to providing greater control; but as it is a resource, you can't use it frivolously.