Initial Development Stages

Having never coded in Unity before it was important for me to get to grips with Playmaker before we began work on the project. Knowing what the tool allowed us to achieve was important in us designing a game we could realistically make. We didn’t want to over scope the game at an early stage, only to find out that later down the line it would be unachievable with the programs we had chosen.

Over the summer months, I set about working with Unity and Playmaker and quickly picked up the basics. Simple things like having a moveable character were easy to implement and this gave me the confidence that we were heading in the right direction when it came to the programs we had chosen.

My first task of the project was to start to learn how to code within Playmaker with the end goal of being able to get the AI and pickups working within the game. It’s been a steep learning curve and I have picked up a number of other skills during the learning process that will help me during the development of future games.

My other roles within this project will be to create player health and damage as well as making menu and instruction screens so players can easily navigate through settings and level options. These will obviously need to be included at a later stage of development, once the first levels are working and fully underway.

Over the next stage of development, I plan on having pickups within the test scene of the game working and also to have more of an understanding about how the AI will work within the game. These two things are crucial to the progression of the development and will be my main focus for the foreseeable future.

By: Philip Rozier