During this game jam, My group of 6 needed to create a 30 second micro-game inside of a unity framework. The goal was to have a collection of small games to be played roulette style on an arcade machine. Over the course of a week I led my team to create a combo based fighting game with some great art.
During the first day we mostly brainstormed about the project. Creating a variety of concepts in our Miro board. We began with 5 ideas but eventually it was down between marshmallow roasting and a fighting game. We began this first day with 5 members and did not pick up number 6 until day 2.
My team really wanted to go with the marshmallow but I convinced them to go with the other one because I knew that many people would try and make some kind of campfire simulator. (there were 4 by the end of the week)
With the fighting game decided on we needed to pick our roles. We had a 2d artist and 3d artist. We had one member who specialized in data and one more who was decent at programming. Being the most experienced group member and with a good bit of programming as well I naturally fell into the role of leader.
Fairly early on the group began asking me for instruction and so eventually I just assumed the position
On the second day we took on another member who had been abandoned by their group. They proposed the idea of bears fighting and we all loved it. I asked her for some quick sketches and it looked great. Next was to make a list of art that we would need
- Dim, lit up and failed input icons for combos
- Heart Icons for health
- two bear sprites with attack, hurt, win, victory, and defeat animations
- A dojo backround
- a bear sensei with an animation for when a bear is hit
- pillars to put the input icons on
Then we made a list of sound effects we would need
And finally a list of features
- Input detection from arcade controls
- function to randomize 4 of 6 inputs and produce a list (duplicates allowed)
- function for taking those inputs and allowing the user to succeed in an attack by completing them in order without mistakes
- animation controller for the icons to appear and change based on the users input
- Animations activated for attacking, being attacked, winning, and losing.
- The game controller which defines all interactions and and changes game state depending. For example player one completes their combo and hits player two controller now says player 2 is at 2/3 health.
- sound effect controller and integration
This project had two major road blocks. Number one was overscoping. We originally intended to create a 1 player version as well which we needed to scrap. however my programmer kept trying to work on it. I told them that we were burning that version but they just couldnt give up on it which lost us time. My solution was to make everybody take a break. while they were gone I created a list of tasks for everybody and when they returned I made it clear that they needed to work through the list before anything else could be done.
The second was some github troubles we had. As I was the only member familiar with git, there were bound to be issues. but at a certain point multiple people pushed broken projects to the repository. This made my programmer extremely upset but when they started to get mean I made it clear that blaming people was not acceptable. As a group we solved the issue and created what I believe is a really cool game.
After all was said and done my group all thanked me for my leadership and told me that I kept them all working and on track.
Jack McLoughlin 