David Monteleone, Week 2 Journal PPJ, Blog post 2, GMAP 378

Content with Hours (Examples included):

This week I worked towards the grey boxing of a new mini game (I briefly started some of it last week). This mini game has been code named the ‘Water Gun’ game. The idea revolves around shooting a target to move it upwards towards the top of a pole. When the target reaches the top, the humans receive points and move onto the next game. There’s a catch though! The aliens on the outside are mashing the up arrow to move their own target up towards the top of their own pole. If the aliens reach the top before the humans then the humans lose. I helped brainstorm this idea and come up with several of the game mechanics that I’ll discuss below. This time marked here is for brainstorming.

(1.5 hrs)

                Here’s where plenty of my Unity skills were tested. Since I was never too deep into one mini game last term, my nitty gritty Unity skills are lacking. The mechanics took me a while to make. The mechanics I implemented into the Water Gun game this week include: recoil from firing the water gun, syncing the player controls together, allowing the aliens to move their own target upwards with the up arrow on the keyboard, random motion from the alien ship hovering, and adding all of the necessary UI elements to allow players to understand the game. All collision mechanics had to be implemented by myself too.

                Here’s how the game works as a whole as of now. The humans hold their fire buttons together to fire the water gun. There is no direct aiming! As the water gun fires, the ship that the humans are in recoils upwards. This allows them to track their target up. If the water gun stops firing then the ship moves downward to its original position. The game relies on good cooperation between the humans. Messing up once can result in an easy victory for the aliens. The aliens simply need to mash the up arrow to move their target up. Now the aliens have a mini game that should get their hearts racing! All of the previously mentioned mechanics have been implemented into the grey box this week. Scoring, timers, winning, and losing work appropriately in the game too. I made a temporary selection box on the game select screen to play it with the other games. Below is some example code for how I implemented to hovering movement of the ship during the game:

  float offsetY = Mathf.Sin(Time.time * speed + timingOffset) *     height / 2;

        Vector3 vy = new Vector3(0, offsetY, 0);

        transform.position += vy;

(4.5 hrs)

Content Positive (Duplicate hours from above):

-          The original idea, concept, and mechanics for the Water Gun game were brainstormed. (1.5 hrs)

-          The grey boxed Water Gun game has been added to Alien Arcade along with its base mechanics. (4.5 hrs)

Content Negative

-          None

Total Hours for the week: 6 hrs