SAVED IN THE EDIT

ABOUT

A 3D First Person Puzzle game where you have to rearrange film fragments to solve puzzles by changing the timeline of how things happen in each level, created for the 2020 Global Game Jam. Repair the timeline and get through the increasingly complicated levels.

DEVELOPMENT INFO

  • Developed by Seyhyun Yang, Jacob Smellie, Michael Tilbury, and Amber Renton
  • 48 hour development cycle (February 2020)
  • 4 developers
  • Made using Unity Engine

CONTRIBUTIONS

  • Programmer
  • Designer

POST-MORTEM

WHAT WENT RIGHT

  • A significant amount of time was spent on pre-production, specifically on planning out the data structures used to implement the event timeline system, which allowed for quick and efficient work with no to little pivots or reduntant work
  • The event timeline data structures we developed allowed for level design to be done very easily, without having to create new prefabs and eventsystems for each level





WHAT COULD BE IMPROVED

  • We did not have any artists on our team, so all the levels were made through the liberal use of Unity Primitives, and while this was later turned into a legitamate aesthetic choice, it would have been better if we had a 3D artist to model the levels and add textures
  • We had designed multiple unique mechanics, but due to time constraints we were only able to implement 3 of them, each in a unique level that combined it with the previous mechanics; if we had alloted time better and constructed a more robust eventsystem, it would have been possible to implement all of them



LESSONS LEARNED

  • When coding and designing in Unity, if anything is going to be reused, or a similar method will be used in the future, creating prefabs and making the code modular so it can be used for other, similar, purposes can save large amounts of time and effort
  • Knowing the basics of Blender or another 3D modeling program can be invaluable for small projects like Game Jams, so you can make basic 3D models like wedges and cones without having to composite them with large numbers of Unity Primitives

CONTRIBUTIONS

My major contribution to this project was the implementation of event timeline calculation for the eventsystem to use, and the design and implementation of the 3 levels. The timeline calculation was simply done by calculation and distance from the left side of the empty film reel to each 'event' file strip, and converting into a percentage, which would initiate the events at those corresponding percentages of the total time of each level. For the level design, we ended up hand-crafting each level out Unity Primitives, specifically cubes. The first level was designed to introduce the players to the basic concept of the timeline-arrangement gameplay and the button mechanic, and the power line mechanics. The second level introduced the concept of breakable walls, while expanding, and complicating the button mechanics. The third level introduces moving platforms, and further expanded the button mechanics, requiring the player to get the order and timing of each button press correct, while platforming on the moving platforms. While this was were the game stopped, several other levels and mechanics were designed. The next level would have introduced using buttons to control the movement of large objects, and transporting those objects using moving platforms. The final level would have been a very challenging level, using all the previously learned mechanics concurrently, and would have been a test of skill and memorization of the timeline. However, this was unable to make it into the game.