#Week 11

#Week 11

The one where some blood was sacrificed

This week was a very busy week with some very long shifts at work but I still managed to do some work done

Board Game 

After finishing all the art work for the board game and all the material that I ordered for it arrived I started to print everything out. After everything was printed out I stuck adhesive paper on the card board and foam board used scalpel blades to cut everything to their right size.

Some things had to be reprinted as cutting with a scalpel blade and a ruler wasn't always that easy and I cut out some of the cards wrong as I slipped away with the ruler. I also have to thank two unsung heroes that helped me with the process of cutting everything out and helping me produce this board game.

In Engine

A part from printing the board game I also found some time to make the second mini game work. This mini game is located on the map tile 5 where the players will find a mechanism that has something stuck in it. They have to use strength to unblock the mechanism and once they get it to work a hidden door will appear. Since they have to use "strength" the mini game consists of repeatedly pressing buttons on the controller until they unblock the mechanism.

I made this game work entirely through UI widgets. The widget has several layers with the buttons the player has to press. Once they hit one button often enough the active layer will be set to hidden and the next layer is set to visible.

I will be working on the last puzzle game in engine next week and will improve all mini games and puzzles I already made work. I will also make them look a little more consistent with the game with the assets I found on the marketplace and use more UI widgets to give some feedback to the player.

#Week 10

#Week 10

The one where shortcuts are okay

Board Game

 So this week I have focused mostly on the board game art assets following the silhouette style and black/grey shades as this made my work easier and faster. The only color I used is a bright orange/yellow to make stand out numbers on the story deck and on the maps.  I tried to follow one visual language with all board game elements to make it look consistent. As I needed very unique map tiles and I am not that skilled in art I asked someone to do them for me following my level design and suggestions of where items should be placed (e.g. the sarcophagus in the middle of tile 4) as they are important parts to the story.

While I was doing the art I also started to write up the story on each story card which proved itself to be quiet challenging as forming sentences with all needed information to fit on a card wasn't a simple task. I asked a friend to over read them to make sure there were no English spelling or grammar mistakes.

In-Engine

I also made the first mini puzzle work this week. This puzzle is located on the map tile 2. The player has to decipher something written on a stone in a different language. It is a simple and small puzzle where the player has to select tiles and go through possible parts of images until they all form one big image. Once the player accomplishes this in under 30 seconds the video game will tell them what story card to draw and reveal what item they need to collect in order to save their friend.

I used some short cuts to make this puzzle work as I haven't much time left and I felt that I was loosing too much time in researching how to properly do this puzzle. I used the first person shooter template from unreal and made the gun and bullets hidden in game. The player just has to aim on a tile and click on a button which will shoot an invisible bullet that hits the trigger box that makes the tile to change the material. I used an integer to keep track whether the player has completed the puzzle or not.

Once the right material is on the tile unreal will add one to the integer. If the player changes the material again one is subtracted of the integer. Once the integer is equal to nine the game ends and the player was successful.