Build a body

Build a body

Build a body was the first full game that I made, during lockdown. I wanted to make a full game in Unity, making all the assets myself, and using C# to tie them together. Seeing as I had no knowledge of 3D moddeling techniques, I knew that the bulk of the actors would need to be made out of primitives. I soon arrived at an idea where the player would start as a simple ball, rolling around, and then could find other primitives (cylinders and a block) with which you would construct a body. The order in which you find the other objects affects what you turn into, and each combination of objects has a unique way of moving.

The player hopping between hills
A ball by a river
The player as a ball by the river






The two images above show some of the objects that move by using Unity physics. The ball rolls around with an impulse added by the player's controls, and the hopping ball is similar but instead only moves when in the air after the player has jumped. One thing that was really useful for me as a developer when making Build a body is that it allowed me to experiment with a lot of different tools in Unity. You can see the river I created using the particle emmision system in the left picture, and in both pictures how I used textures and the terraining system to create the enviroment.

The player as an uneven walking block
The player as a walking ball
 

 

 

 

 

 

For most of the other objects, I used the Unity animation system for their movement, giving me a chance to practice with the system. This allowed me to achive one of my main goals for the game; make each combination of objects feel unique and distinct. In total, there are five different routes for what object you become, depending on when you pick up the block, leading to around 20 unique things you can be. As well as the pure gameplay, I also added narration and music (both done by me); I'm quite happy with the music for the game as I feel that it matches the setting well. The game even has a subtle day cycle, with the light changing slowly over time. 

The player as a snake in the maze
 

Overall, this game was a great opportunity for me to design and tie together the different systems needed for a full game. You can play it for yourself at https://reddragonmakesgames.itch.io/build-a-body, and see what you can become!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Imperfect Control: Gameplay

Image
 As promised, in this post I'll be talking about the gameplay in Imperfect Control. As the name suggests, I wanted to do something different with this game rather than creating a typical roguelike where the player moves around the rooms. Instead, I had the idea of having the player move the enemies. Each room then becomes trying to perform the correct movements to destoy the enemies (by moving them into hazards), while at the same time making sure the player wasn't hit by any of the enemies.  Spawning: I wanted each room to have a separate parameter (which I called hazard level), detailing how difficult each room would be. Each room could then be generated with a seperate value as part of the map (Part of the reason for this was that one of the powerups I was hoping to add would reveal the hazard level of nearby rooms, unfortunatly I didn't manage to implement this). To control the spawning of each room therefore, I assigned this hazard level, and therefore the spawning, to
Read more

Armageddump (Boss Rush Jam 2023)

Image
  Armageddump   First boss gameplay Armageddump is a 3D first person boss rush, developed in Unity. As part of the team working on it, I took the original concept and designed the bosses, gameplay and story and fully programmed the second two bosses. The programming included boss AI and management, developing the arenas and props and adding models, animations and sounds. The assets and code for this game can be found at https://github.com/RedDragonMakesGames/Boss-Rush-Jam . Game walkthrough: Blog posts about Armageddump: Game Design
Read more

Hair of the Wolf (GameOff 2022)

Image
  Hair of the Wolf First level gameplay Hair of the Wolf is a randomly generated 2D platformer made in Unity. As part of the team, my role was enemy and boss design and implementation, random generation and paralax and camera control as well as many smaller programming tasks such as character interaction and damage hit/hurtboxes. The assets and code for the project can be found at https://github.com/RedDragonMakesGames/Gamejam2022 . Gameplay clips:
Read more