Updated Mon Jun 25 2018 20:00 Development update - First status update
It feels both great and scary at the same time to “go public” with the work I am doing on Restoration of Duramthia. It is my first game and I am having a lot of fun following the Unity 2D course to create this text-based game.
01. Insights and remarks about the programming learned
I knew a bit about C# before starting this course. Think the basic console application level of programming. I had great fun learning more about how to get classes and methods etc. to work together. I found [SerializedField] to be particularly useful since it allows custom development of the Unity Inspector.
When I was thinking about the overall storyline of the game I came up with an interesting approach to add more flavor to the story. This however required me to extend the functionality of the Inspector to allow for additional content to be created and mapped with the Unity UI. In other words, I needed to map up more Unity text fields with additional input segments in the Unity Inspector.
The red markings are only there to avoid spoiling part of the storyline.
As programming go there isn’t anything “new” that I have done. I enhanced the script with more of what was taught regarding [SerializeField] and creating Scriptable Objects.
One insight I want to share is that when working with [SerializeField] to customize the inspector functionality. The order of how they are displayed in the Unity Inspector from top to bottom is the same as how they appear in Visual Studio.
I had originally planned to include some type of simpler inventory system. As I tried to develop this functionality I quickly realized that it was above my current skill level and dropped the idea in favor of storyline development.
In short, the method of approach I tried was to create an inventory array to store the items and somehow print out the contents of Inventory Array to display the contents. I realized that I have not fully mastered the skill of creating new classes, methods etc. and making them work together. I am pretty sure that inventory will be covered further on in this course.
This means that the programming for this game is completed and I can focus on creating the story.
02. Game design progress
The Game Design is coming together. I am using Draw.io and the template used in the course. The colors of the card indicate the following. Red for death, Green for Successfully navigation through a “chapter”. Blue for developed and implemented story card. White cards are for planned cards that need to be developed.
Game design challenge - keeping track of "turns"
One challenge I faced was when I had split up the story into two bransches created by the outcome of the player action. I had an event planned that would happen after X taken decision or “X Turns” as I call them.
In short it made little sense to me to have the player face a certain scenario in ex. 3 turns but if the player choose a different path the player would face a similar sitation in 6 turns.
The event has a measure of time, speed and distance too it.
I came up with a way to simply add T0, T1, T2 for Turn 1, Turn 2 and Turn 3 etc. as the first thing in my storyline card titles. This made it A LOT easier to keep track of the time, or pace of the story.
03. Summary
Overall I am having a blast developing this game. There is still quite a lot of hours left of development of the story before I would consider the game to be complete. I am planning to publish a release when I reach the first successful story card to see if there is enough interest to continue developing the story.
If you made it this far a big shout out and THANK YOU for taking the time to read this. Feel free to provide feedback as you see fit. If you see something you like that you want to comment on, great! If you see something you dislike or hate, let me know.
If you have questions or comments etc. feel free to ask.
Until next update, Happy programming!
like, some inventory display (if required for future development) and perhaps a HP display would make it a bit more engaging for me as I’d have direct feedback on what’s going on and my current state. BUT, this doesn’t mean that people who enjoy this genre would require it! 