For Game Jam week one, we were tasked to create a game based around the theme 'its spreading.' My group and I decided to do a game based around spreading the joyful sounds of music to a sad town of people to cheer them up. I wanted to use this project to learn about the basics of Cinemachine within Unity. I've never used Cinemachine before, but I've researched some of its uses and it seems it would cut down alot of coding time. I want to implement it for my capstone as it would make camera switches and effects way more efficient.
I used a Cinemachine Brain within my hierarchy to hold my camera manager script, utilizing the brain to control the camera. It gave the switch between cameras a smooth transition rather than a hard cut like coding it would've done. This script holds all of the cameras and the priorities (what camera to show in the game scene) of the cameras, making it easier to switch the cameras within my other scripts.
I referenced the camera manager script at the top. I could easily switch camera priorities with one line of code. (as shown by the highlighted parts.)
My exploration of the unity event system led me to discover the potential of triggers. This powerful tool can be used to create jump scares and music changes within the game. By utilizing box colliders, I can trigger events when the player enters, when they are inside the collider, and once they exit, opening up a world of possibilities for game mechanics.
I also wanted to learn about game art as it's something I dont do when in group projects. I created the mid-grounds (towns, grass, and other art excluding the background and characters). Our group started by creating a mood board to agree on the aesthetics of our game. We chose a jazz pop-art style using the film Princess and the Frog as inspiration. From there, I drew up my designs on my iPad; I used bright colours, but quickly realized I would have to use contrasting colors to ensure that when I turned down the saturation later, none of the colors would blend. After fixing those issues, I quickly designed the start screen. From there, I could combine all the designs to add them to the game. Since I kept all my layers seperate I could now quickly move things around and design the world how I wanted.
Overall, I learned so many practical techniques for when I began our capstone project. I freshened up my coding skills and learned a lot about efficient camera management to make a smooth camera movement through scenes. I also learned very useful technical skills using Unity's event system, which will be really useful when creating jump scares or switching between cameras. Creating the mid-grounds helped me understand the importance of colour theory and layering, which will further support me within the design process of my capstone.
Spreading The Beat - Video Gameplay
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