General Outcome

We decided to meet up on discord and get a few things done as a group. we decided on what sort of gameplay we will have and what art style. Also, we made sure everyone in the team, Jamie, Kim, and Ben knew their roles and how to communicate with each other.

for the art style, we decided on a 2D look with depth, the depth will be represented with parallax backgrounds and contrasting colours. Speaking of colours we also decided to split the game into different sections, a tutorial, a learning and reinforcement area, and then finally a testing area, each set of levels will have its own colour schemes to make it visually pleasing and easy to understand.

Individual Tasks

Jamie

• set up Trello
  • I got all the lists I think we would need to start off, then is automated processing, like labeling cards, in order to streamline the trello and make it easy to use and understand.

• set up the itch.io page 
  • I had to make sure that the itch io page was set to a HTML build and that others could come onto the page and edit/upload on it.
• set up the git repo
  • this took a bit of time as I'm new to GIT, but after some trial and error I managed to get a repo set up and learned the commands so that I could access it from anywhere without going onto the actual GIT page

• made sure everyone had access to all the above
  • I made sure everyone knew how the Trello page functioned so that all users in the team could edit and add stuff as they pleased. I also got into a discord call and showed them how the GIT repo worked so that they could access the unity project at any time.
• got a basic scene
  • I set up the unity project and made sure it was a HTML build
  • I made some platforms for the player to jump on
• added collisions 
  • I made sure that all the objects in the world had collisions, and made a character prefab with a rigid-body and collider.
• added WASD movement and joystick movement using the new input system
  • This was challenging as I had never used the New Input System, It took many hours to get the controls set up and make a basic movement script, at this point I had one player that could only go back and forward
• added jumping
  • Jumping required more editing in the controls from the new input system, and I didn't realize I needed to change the Event - Gameplay - Jump field to onJump() until I found out through stack overflow, this was a minor setback compared to the problems to come.
• added local multiplayer max 2 people

  
  

  • This was by far the most complicated step, I had to add a Player Manager Object, this basically detected new input devices and assigned the player prefab to it, the first issue I can into was that both players would use the same controls, to fix this I replaces basic code like 

horizontal = Input.GetAxisRaw("Horizontal");

to 

public void onMove(InputAction.CallbackContext context) => movementInput = context.ReadValue<Vector2>();

all this basically does is make the object only move on the axis if the right input device is used, keeping track of which player is which. then once all the changes were made I tested out the game with a controller and keyboard, it worked like a charm

• cleaned up bugs
  • there were a few bugs with the collisions and jumping that I fixed, I also took the time to clean up and comment on the code to make it easy to understand.

Kim

• Character clothing concept 
• UI concept 
• Temple design concept
  • Clothing: I started researching what clothing would be the best fit for a cold Cave. I took inspiration from the stereotypical brown winter coat with white fur trimming. The familiarity makes it fitting as a late-game item. I looked at some imitations of Cave dweller clothing which consisted of a lot of furs. This could be incorporated in all articles of clothing for example fur-trimmed boots. As for the colour, I looked at contrasting colours to blue which was yellow, and red. Making the clothing a more burnt umber colour could make the player stand out a little but still fit in with the environment. Both characters will have a series of belts and backpacks. All of which are leather.

• UI: Next thing to look at was the UI. A simple inventory would be great. The inventory would have slots for a coat, boots, and gloves. I suggested there was also a freeze gauge visible at all times on the screen however mechanics on this need to be established. I took some inspiration from stardew valleys inventory where you see your character and slots around it. Each slot has a faint shape of what item goes where. The background of the inventory will be a backpack, the inside of the backpack being a lighter shade of burnt umber. Perhaps next to the character slots there could be an inventory for puzzle keys or other garments.

• Temple: The last thing I worked on was the temple design. I took huge inspiration from sable as the architecture of the temple is easy to see and very grandiose. The temple design I had in mind was circular and had a statue in the center. However, this posed to be an issue as our game was 2D so having the circular shape wouldn't portray the same effect as hoped. So I decided to take a look at a 2D game with temple-like structures. The game that I looked at was Gris. Having a large staircase leading to this God statue would look nice and give the opportunity to add certain artistic things like vines, plants or even droplets or water dripping from the roof. Perhaps even having a bright light leading you up the staircase coming from being the statue could be an option. The temple will have a lot of columns and archways connecting these columns. The structure could also have cracks and moss showing the ages this temple has been standing. The colouring would be the same white from Greek structures, perhaps now a grey from how old it is.

Ben

• I started off by draw up some concept art to visualise my ideas for designing the starting area of the game. As it is concept art, I did not delve into the gameplay aspect too much while drawing it up. 
• I also drew up 5 concept designs for the interactable spirits for the game 

• Finally I drew up a basic concept for the temple/ places of worship that would be in the later parts of the game. Despite these being later game, I felt that it was important to do now to better visualise the culture of the people who's remnants will be found throughout all parts of the game

• Problems while designing: Had problems trying to design a believable village that could be built underground. I ended up Deciding on the idea to have the village built out of parts of a abandoned mineshaft. I felt that this would adequately explain visually how the village could feasibly have been built. Later, I added glowing roof crystals and cave moss with water dripping from ceiling. I added this once again to help with visually explaining the villages ability to grow crops underground. For the layout of the village, I wanted to place all objects in a way that would feel believable for the narrative our game is following of people descending further down into the earth as the surface gets colder.

• I had some issues when designing an idea for the temple/ place of worship in the game. At first I wanted to design the exterior, but figured that it would most likely not be shown in-game. I personally find the designing interiors is one of my weakest areas when it comes to concepts, as the thought that goes into designing the areas to feel lived in while having valuables and possessions a person would have is not something that comes naturally to me. When designing interiors, the basic essentials are never enough, as having just that makes the location feel artificial. This artificial feeling would not work in our game. That being said I was not to concerned with how much detail I was going to put into designing the temple for now as concept art tends to be built upon and changes and both Kim and I have done up concept art for the temple separately. In the end, I decided to keep the temple design basic by adding some minimalist foundations, contrasted by a elegant statue of the people deity, a sun god. I felt that though it would not be feasible to build such a statue underground with their materials, it would tell a story about the peoples priorities, as the had built a refined statue of their deity instead of using the materials for housing later.

• I had some difficulty finding a spirit design that would match our proposed design style of the game. So instead I ended up designing multiple that could be mixed/ matched. I felt as though the more choice we had in the design, the better as there would be multiple different spirits throughout the game