Lauren Xie
Color the World
In August of 2022, I decided to make a game. Game development has always been something I wanted to learn as someone who has been playing games since the early 2000s.
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My game, Color the World, is a 2D puzzle adventure platformer pursuing the theme of perspective to better understand the people around us. In this game, the player will traverse through different and segregated "color kingdoms" to talk to people and complete quests to help the characters come to understand each other to create a more colorful, blended world.
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Color the World is still in the early stages of development. Right now, I am still trying to figure out how to implement the playable character movement in a way that easily incorporates the other necessary components like dialogue.
Mechanics
Above is a live diagram of my state machine. A state machine is a method to record what state an object is in. For example, in the diagram the player character starts in the ‘idle’ state when the game starts. When the player uses the movement keys, they add an X Input (xInput in the diagram) which tells the system to change the state of the player from ‘idle’ to ‘move’. While in this ‘move’ state, the player can move left and right.
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Something else you may notice in the diagram is the terms ‘substate’ and ‘superstate’ in the key/legend. Basically, the ‘substate’ inherits its properties, functions, and actions from the ‘superstate’. I like to describe in terms of parent-child relationships, both programming, and real life. The ‘superstate’ is the parent and the ‘substate’ is the child. A child can inherit different qualities and features from the parent, like dark hair, blue eyes, or even mannerisms; however, the child can also have its own properties like personalities or food tastes in addition to the properties inherited from the parent.
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In the case of my state machine diagram, we have the ‘grounded’ superstate and the ‘move’ and ‘idle’ substates. Both the ‘move’ and ‘idle’ substates have properties from the ‘grounded’ state but each has other properties that make them different - in the ‘move’ state you can move left and right but in the ‘idle’ state you stay still.
According to the key/legend, the arrows indicate the flow of the state machine, meaning which state the player changes to depending on the input and conditions. The white boxes indicate what the conditions are to change to the state pointed to by the arrow. For example, to move from any of the ‘grounded’ states, the player needs to press an ability input, like the spacebar for the jump action. To jump, specifically, the player would need to press the jump input but also be able to jump (CanJump). These could be restricted in that if the player was trying to double jump (jump twice in the air) but already jumped twice, then they wouldn’t be able to jump anymore and would fall (switching to ‘InAir’ state).
Specs of Color the World
To make Color the World I am using the game engine Unity. In Unity, you can add assets and elements to build how your game looks, but also attach scripts of code to actually make your game run. To write the scripts for my game, I am using C# and for storing large files of dialogue, I am using JSON files.
Something else I am using to make my game is Github. Github is a hosting service that is used for software development. On Github, you can upload and share your code (and other files) in repositories. These repositories are like giant folders that you can store all you code, data, and other files in. For Color the World, in particular, I have 2 repositories - one for my actual game and one for concept art. My game Github repository is linked to Unity so any changes that I make on my game in Unity will be changed and saved in Github. Github allows me to open and work on my game on any computer with Unity. This way, if something happens to one computer, I can still work on my game without having to worry about losing my game.
Progress Update
For the time being, I am taking a break from developing my game to focus more on developing different professional skills as I look for a full-time position.
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I finally fixed my movement to implement state machines! Now my player can move left and right, jump, and even double jump!
Below is a video where I showcase all these movement mechanics:
Demo
Below was my estimated timeline for my first demo of the game:
My goal is to release a sample of my game by the end of the year. Above I estimated the amount of time it would take for me to complete the different parts of my game. The actual completion of these components are subject to change as I continue to develop my game and navigate through roadblocks and challenges.
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For a more in-depth look, I also added a chart of the different components within each category of my game.
The cells highlighted in yellow are the components that I plan to include in my first demo.
Lessons Learned
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Don't be afraid to talk to other people about the game! By talking to other people, I can flush out my ideas more thoroughly. Throughout these few months of development, I talked to a variety of people with varying levels of experience with gaming and game design. Talking my game plan out, both high and low level, helped me understand how to communicate gaming ideas with people who don't have that experience (like inventory or double job), as well as developing a better understanding of the game myself. For example, I had an idea of how I will develop the movements of my player, but I didn't truly understand how they work and what parts I am missing until explaining it. It's similar to teaching someone a subject to get a better understanding or solidify your knowledge.
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Time management. As always, time management is important when doing anything. I learned the importance of time management in the world of project development through this game didn't stick out to me while developing other projects for school or work. This is the first big project that I have taken on myself so defining my goals and estimating how much time it would take me to develop each part I thought were easy since I only had to consider myself. The reality, however, was completely different. I created my timeline based on an ideal situation where this game is the major project going on in my life. In actuality, I had my school work, classes, work, and social events that occupied my time. It was also difficult to keep to the schedule I had planned because of my big senior design project that I am working on for the whole year. I decided to take a break from my game development to focus more time on my senior design project since it is not only more pressing on time (I only have a year), but also on importance since the completion of this project will be the final step towards my graduation and more importantly professional skill development.